Franz Peter Schubert

“Stephen Hough fashions a viable programme culled from a bottomless piano bench of transcriptions, encores and other sundry ear-ticklers.
Indeed, Hough proves that one can make a well-balanced meal using only desserts. Modern pianists, to be sure, are more calorie conscious than their forebears, and Hough is no exception.
It's not his way to emphasise inner voices or linger over juicy modulatory patterns, à la Hofmann, Moiseiwitsch, Horowitz, Cortot or Cherkassky. If Hough prefers to bind Godowsky's garish counterpoints with skimmed milk rather than double cream, he's cheeky (and smart!) enough to insert his own ossias into Moskowski's Etincelles, or to retool the Tchaikovsky/ Pabst Sleeping Beauty Paraphrase to more brilliant pianistic effect. As in his previous 'Piano Albums', Hough serves up his own Rodgers & Hammerstein transcriptions. If the decorative note-spinning in 'Hello, Young Lovers' distracts from rather than enhances the eloquent original, the pianist's giddy romp through 'The Carousel Waltz' is a tour de force that brilliantly recaptures both the tender and tough-minded qualities inherent in the musical's book. Hough's own Etude de Concert gets plenty of finger-twisting mileage out of a rather un-memorable theme, harmonised, however, with clever Gershwinisms.
The unadorned Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky selections are played with heartfelt simplicity and a lean yet singing sonority.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

Caecilia Prijs Award

“This 1951 mono recording set the benchmark for many years, and so it probably did much to establish the current, questionable norms of tempo. But it's superb performance, played with skill and sensitivity and unfailingly musical.” BBC Music Magazine, January 2008

“This was the first ever recording of VerklärteNacht in its original sextet form and it remains unsurpassed. When it was first reviewed in Gramophone, the late Lionel Salter wrote of it as being 'beautifully played with the most careful attention to details of dynamics and phrasing, with unfailing finesse, with consistently sympathetic tone, and, most important, with a firm sense of the basic structure'. The Schubert too fully deserves its classic status. The tranquillity of the slow movement has never been conveyed with greater nobility or more perfect control.
The Hollywood Quartet made music for the sheer love of it and as a relaxation from their duties in the film-studio orchestras, for which they were conspicuously over-qualified.
They have incomparable ensemble and blend; and their impeccable technical address and consummate tonal refinement silence criticism.
To add to the pleasure, the transfers could not be better.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“The Hollywood Quartet's 1951 version Schubert's magical Quintet...stands apart from all others. Over half a century on, its qualities of freshness and poetry, as well as an impeccably confident address, still impress as deeply as ever...This disc is the product of consummate artistry and remains very special indeed.” Penguin Guide, 2011 edition

“A beautiful disc of sacred motets from one of this country’s finest choirs” Classic FM Magazine

'A delightful collection of songs inspired by water' (The Guardian)

'This persuasive disc is faultlessly recorded' (Gramophone) 'Simply superb'

'Hill's work here is inspired enough to place him in a line of tenor-interpreters of Schubert that leads from Erb and Patzak through Schreier to Rolfe Johnson. In legato, tone and above all understanding his readings are little short of ideal, from start to finish' (Gramophone)