Stephen Hough is considered one of the world’s leading pianists, winning global acclaim and numerous awards through his hard work and talent. This moving memoir of his unconventional Life tells how Hough grew up in an unmusical home in Cheshire and defied the probabilities to make it to the main stage of Carnegie Hall in New York at age 21.
Hough describes his early love affair with the piano which shriveled away after a teenage nervous breakdown and degenerated into failure at school and six-hours a day of watching mindless television.
Hough’s writes about his supportive, if eccentric parents: his artistically frustrated father and his housework-hating mother. Hough’s education was challenging. There were the teachers who encouraged and inspired Hough–and others who hit him on the head screaming, “You’ll do nothing with your life!”
The heart of Enough for me is Hough’s struggle in finding his way back to the piano after abandoning plans to become a Catholic priest. Hough then flourished at the Royal Northern College of Music and the Juilliard School. Enough ends with Hough beginning his career as an international soloist. If you’re in the mood for an inspiring story of a young boy who beats the odds to become one of the best pianists in the world, give Enough a try. Do you enjoy piano music? GRADE: A
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Prologue — 1
Wirral to Thelwall
Ridgeway 5
Third finger 6
A short walk from the Beatles 8
Upstairs and downstairs 9
Grandad and the pet shop boy 11
Salted sugar 12
Transparent machismo 13
Vicious Henry 14
Bianowig 16
Where my caravan has (not) rested 17
Lollipop 19
Uncle Alf and Auntie Ethel 21
Orange lipstick 23
Crane’s and consumption 25
A complicated character 28
Hideous ferns 30
Mompou: The young boy not in the garden 31
The most important record I owned 33
Heterosexual nocturne 36
Could this be the new Mozart? 37
Pink stilettos in Criccieth 38
All Saints Drive 40
The long garden 42
Choccie 44
Coffee and being powsh 45
Fatty foods 47
Eating on Sundays and Jean Sheppard 49
Chubby Cheeks 51
Empress 54
Colours of springtime 56
All things bright and beautiful 57
Pulling up my socks 58
Circumcised 59
Dogs 62
Doris Cox and her knickers 64
Parents’ bedroom 65
Pills and potions 67
Irby 68
Metal guru 70
Beloved neighbours 72
Chetham’s
Naughty boy 77
Random teachers7 9
Shit in a bottle 85
Cecilia Vajda inside our bones 87
Latin and the greenhouse effect 88
Isador 89
Steele more 91
The wise man with the pipe 93
Can I learn some passionate Chopin? 98
Philharmonic Hall and three piano recitals 100
Not Paderewski 102
No witnesses 105
Lennox Berkeley’s umbrella1 07
Knee up 109
My purple bedroom and my wasted years 112
David Bowie 114
Yes, I pulled down his trunks 116
Whatever you do, don’t turn out queer 118
My mother’s lady friends 121
Jimmy Savile – twice 123
Bell bottoms 125
Not the Knot Garden! 126
Cello, drums and flute 128
Henry Miller, my favourite writer 129
Dover Road 131
Bibles and badges 136
Bloody hell 138
My gregarious mother 140
The late Mr Hough 142
Red roses 144
Eileen, anything more to add? 146
The pink moustache 150
Heads up: Three tricks my father taught me 151
Posthumous poet 151
The pianos I’ve owned 152
The Dream of Gerontius 154
On stage 156
RNCM
Leaving Chetham’s 161
A fabulous zigzag run 162
Doors opening 164
One of the greatest men I’ve met 168
Composing and orchards 173
A screech in the library 174
Devon and the Tiber 176
Living as a priest in Manchester 180
A vocation to be a pianist 182
The Eighth Day 185
Pickering Arms 187
Harry’s infallible left hand 188
Hazel 190
Dad the hippie 191
Norman Baker 194
Tinkle of glass 197
All aboard to Juilliard via Pimlico 199
Juilliard
Across the Atlantic 203
Bill’s blue-eyed confidence 205
Eline overlooking the river 209
Cockroaches and Proust 213
Madame Borsuk 215
Friends and the cafeteria 219
Random teachers at Juilliard 221
This just isn’t your piece, dear 225
Attending concerts in New York 230
Smoking and showing off on the fourth floor 235
Chita, Katie and Olegna 237
Eating in the early years in New York 239
Closets and bars 241
Wisdom teeth on edge 243
The late Glenn Sales 244
Competing before Naumburg 245
After Naumburg 248
Epilogue 253
I definitely enjoy some Field, Chopin, Schubert and Mendelssohn as well as the more unconventional stuff by Crumb and Ligeti. During COVID I listened to a lot of Harold Budd’s work which is much better than the ambient label might imply. I don’t get to catch enough piano music live and that’s a shame because a good recital can be a rare moving experience.
I’m familiar with some of Hough’s recordings and he comes across well in interviews. I didn’t know anything about his backstory and this does sound interesting.
Byron, I’m always fascinated by stories like ENOUGH where a young person surrounded by problems overcomes them and becomes a success. Our latest concert was Brian Culbertson, a jazz pianist, who thrilled the sell-out audience.
All of the most moving concerts I have attended feature the piano. Phil always loved the cello but the piano is so much more dynamic for me.
Patti, I’m with you on the piano. Diane and I have experienced some great pianists who’ve come to Buffalo on tour. When I was visiting Art Scott, he took me to a performance by one of my favorite pianists: Richard Goode. Marvelous music!
Sure I love piano music. Fats Domino, Jerry Lee, Lewis, … what? No, of course I did. I was talking the other day about my father’s RCA Victor stereo collection, records we listened to (not always by choice) over and over throughout my childhood. One that fits into this category was Van Cliburn’s recording of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1. I’m a big fan of Chopin too.
Jeff, my parents played Van Cliburn vinyl records, too. Love Chopin and Mozart!
” . . . six-hours a day of watching mindless television.” What kid didn’t or doesn’t? In 10th Grade,, I did my after-school homework to the background of GENERAL HOSPITAL and WHERE THE ACTION IS. And after dinner, my intellect was put to the test by GILLIGAN’S ISLAND and F TROOP. I did draw the line at THE MUNSTERS, though.
Fred, my parents had the rule: Finish homework, then watch TV. Plus, we had “curfew” bedtime. Before 10 years old it was 8:00. After 10 years old it was 9:00. After 15, the curfew went to midnight.
I have one cd by Hough, his DREAM ALBUM, which I don’t care for. But I think it was just the wrong album for me, and I’m certainly willing to try again sometime.
Jeff, here are some Hough CDs I’ve enjoyed:he
Stephen Hough Piano Collection (Hyperion, 2005)
Liszt: Années de pèlerinage – “Première Année: Suisse”, S. 160 (Hyperion, 2005)
Stephen Hough’s Spanish Album, Hyperion CDA67565, 2005
George Tsontakis: ”Man of Sorrows” for piano & orchestra (Hyperion, 2007) Includes solo works by Schoenberg, Berg and Webern
Mozart Album (Hyperion, 2007)
Stephen Hough in Recital (2009)
Chopin: Late Masterpieces (Hyperion, 2010)
Tchaikovsky: Complete music for piano and orchestra (Hyperion, 2010)
Chopin: Complete Waltzes (Hyperion, 2011)
Really don’t care for Liszt but will cheerfully listen to any sort of piano music if played well and involving sufficiently interesting composition and/or improvisation involved. Bluegrass has a regrettable lack of piano involvement, but inasmuch as some of my earliest loves in music included Steely Dan, Mussorgsky’s PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION, Ray Charles, Fats Domino, the Brubeck Quartets (quickly joined by the Modern Jazz Quartet), and such piano-adjacent music as Bach’s compositions for harpsichord, I’d say pianos are welcomed here.
Even when very young, I would tend to mix any mindless tubing, such as THE WACKY RACES or KIMBA THE WHITE LION or LAND OF THE LOST with rather better fare, from ROCKY AND BULLWINKLE and MAKE A WISH and PBS offers such as NOVA and HOLLYWOOD TELEVISION THEATRE (I certainly remember catching and enjoying Bruce Jay Friedman’s “Steambath” when it was new and I was 8yo…my folks weren’t too worried about what I might be watching, with occasional concerns of my mother, who asked my father to vet the likes of the tv version of M*A*S*H and the documentary series THE WORLD AT WAR to assuage her mild discomfort with them–the M*A*S*H concern mostly driven by the film, I think, though the otherwise best first few seasons of the series were lamentably sexist).
Todd, I love ROCKY AND BULLWINKLE and other wacky books, movies, and cartoons.
WACKY RACES, however, was an endlessly repetitive (and endlessly repeated) Hanna-Barbera ripoff and dumbing-down (!) of THE GREAT RACE in crude cartoon form. It was my favorite utter-trash series as a very young kid. It did introduce me to the name Penelope, as one of the prominent characters was P. Pitstop. Witless. LAND OF THE LOST was nearly as bad, if one wasn’t a small child.
Todd, I enjoyed cartoons as a kid and loved Saturday morning for all the various animated series.