Sir Stephen Hough to Premiere New Piano Quintet with VC Artist Viano Quartet

The premiere of “Les Noces Rouges” will see Hough perform with VC Artist Viano Quartet at Lincoln Center on November 24, 2024

Pianist, composer, and author Sir Stephen Hough will make his Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (CMS) debut at New York's David Geffen Hall on November 24 at 6:30 PM with a program featuring the world premiere of his new piano quintet, Les Noces Rouges. 

Joining Hough in the quintet is the CMS Bowers Program ensemble and former Banff International String Quartet Competition winner, VC Artist Viano Quartet.

A CMS commission, Les Noces Rouges is Hough’s first piano quintet and was inspired by the story of brothers Pavel and Peter, a vignette within Willa Cather’s novel My Antonia. 

“The inspiration of literature on non-vocal, instrumental music is varied and extensive,” Hough said in a press release. “It can follow a precise path of equivalence, like Strauss’ Don Quixote, or it can just be the evocation of a more general atmosphere as with Liszt’s Après un Lecture de Dante. My piano quintet falls somewhere between these two examples.”

The “perfect outline for a macabre tone poem,” Hough saw his work revolve around a wedding, a drunken banquet, and a subsequent snowy sleigh ride across the steppes and a “murder by wolves” brought on by the brothers. 

Throughout the quintet, Hough quotes an Orthodox wedding hymn along with traditional Russian drinking songs. He uses techniques such as a dotted rhythm motive to represent the sleigh ride, and shrieking glissandos in the strings to convey the sounds of howling wolves and terrified horses.

The program will also see Hough performing solo piano, where he juxtaposes the musical personalities of Chopin and Liszt through their works, and showcases three short pieces by late 19th-century French composer Cécile Chaminade — Automne, Autrefois, and Les Sylvains. 

For more information on the concert, click here. 

Sir Stephen Hough’s catalog of around 70 albums has garnered four Grammy nominations, eight Gramophone Awards, and France’s Diapason d’Or de l’Année. His work has been commissioned by Westminster Abbey, Westminster Cathedral, Wigmore Hall, Gilmore Foundation, Genesis Foundation, and members of the Berlin Philharmonic, among others. His achievements include a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2014, a Knighthood for Services to Music in the Queen’s Birthday Honors 2022, and being the first classical performer to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. 

The first-prize winner at the 2019 Banff International String Quartet Competition, the Viano Quartet has since performed in New York, London, Berlin, Vancouver, Paris, Beijing, Toronto, Lucerne, Los Angeles, and more. The quartet was named the inaugural June Goldsmith Quartet-in-Residence for the Music in the Morning series in Vancouver until 2025, and has held residencies at the Curtis Institute, the Colburn Conservatory, Northern Michigan University, and the Meadows School of the Arts.