Stephen Hough: Saint-Saëns: Complete works for piano and orchestra

Hyperion

Gramophone winner 2002

Just one episode from this delectable set should be enough to have you groping for your wallet. It occurs at the start of the First Piano Concerto's second movement, where gently plucked strings usher in the piano soloist with an elegant, neo-classical melody, the epitome of musical cool, stealthy, sexy and meaningfully understated. But the balmy mood is mere preparation for a seductive clarinet tune that arrives in less than two minutes. All this from one of the least known of the concertos in a cycle that covers a 40-year period that starts as Brahms finishes his First Symphony and ends in the year that Mahler completed his Third.

There have been various recordings of the piano concertos but none that I know of upstages the unostentatious virtuosity of Stephen Hough. Hough is a born Romantic but with a difference: his heart might sing, but his fingers ensure that the song is subtly expressed and that fast flurries never sound flustered or brittle. Like his forebear Arthur Rubinstein, Hough is an aristocratic player, a skilled stylist with a reluctance to pound the keys.

If you don't already know the work, the First Concerto will likely prove a real discovery but it is by no means the greatest of the five. The Third's opening was inspired by an Alpine waterfall, and sounds it, whereas the slow movement is filled with stillness and calm. And if you love Saint-Saëns' crowd-pleasing Third Symphony, you'll adore his Fourth Piano Concerto, which ends with a colourful set of variations based on a stirring theme. The Fifth, the Egyptian, reflects his love of travel and his soaking up of exotic musical influences: the second movement forges a path that reaches far into the 20th century.

All this talk about the soloist seems to have relegated the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under Sakari Oramo to the sidelines, which was certainly not the intention. The rapport between soloist and orchestra is watertight and Hyperion's recording team achieves a perfect blend of immediacy and warmth.

Rob Cowan is a presenter on Radio 3

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