Enough

Hough, Stephen

£10.99

Stephen Hough is indisputably one of the world’s leading pianists, winning global acclaim and numerous awards. This memoir recounts his unconventional coming-of-age story, from his beginnings in an unmusical home in Cheshireto the main stage of Carnegie Hall in New York aged 21. We read of his early love-affair with the piano which curdled, after a teenage nervous breakdown, into failure at school and six-hours a day watching television, engulfed in dreams, seesawing between sexual and religious obsessions. We meet his supportive, if eccentric parents. We read of the teachers who encouraged and inspired. Then finding his way back to the piano, having abandoned plans for an alternative life as a Catholic priest, he flourished at the Royal Northern College of Music and the Juilliard School, beginning his career as an international soloist as this book ends.

In stock

Publish Date: 01/08/2024

Description

‘Riveting and revelatory.’ Philip Pullman

‘Wonderfully vivid and touching.’ Literary Review

‘Warm, wise and unflinching.’ Sunday Times

‘Witty and heartfelt.’ Financial Times

Stephen Hough is indisputably one of the world’s leading pianists, winning global acclaim and numerous awards.

Enough recounts his unconventional coming-of-age story, from his beginnings in an unmusical home in Cheshire to the main stage of the Carnegie Hall in New York, aged just twenty-one.

‘Hough writes like a dream, with an almost Alan Bennett-like eye and ear for the sights and sounds of childhood.’ Dan Cairns, Sunday Times

‘A memoir that is by turn audacious, harrowing, joyous, moving and funny . . . Hough [has a] brilliant ear for language, for rhythm, for silence.’ Harriet Smith, Gramophone

‘An endearingly humorous, entrancingly lyrical writer.’ Peter Conrad, Observer

‘Most memoirs give me far more than I want to know – this is the rare sort that left me urgently demanding a second volume, a third, a fourth. I loved it.’ Philip Pullman

Additional information

Dimensions 198 × 129 mm
Author

Publisher

Imprint

Cover

Paperback

Pages

272

Language

English

Edition
Dewey

786.2092 (edition:23)

Readership

General – Trade / Code: K