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'Stephen Hough's memoir had me gripped from the beginning [ .]
riveting and revelatory. 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
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 - his artistically frustrated
father, his housework-hating mother. We read of the teachers who
encouraged and inspired, and others who hit him on the head
screaming, "you'll do nothing with your life". 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.
At the heart of The Final Retreat lies the question of how far the
idea of a priest as a 'wounded healer' can be stretched. It is
written as a diary-cum-memoir by Father Joseph, a middle-aged
priest whose faith and life are in tatters, who is sent on an
eight-day silent retreat by his kindly, sympathetic bishop. Apart
from short daily meetings with a spiritual director, he speaks to
no one. But he writes: page after page, exploring the state of his
soul, the loss of his vocation, his sexual addiction, and the
events which are destroying his life. Influenced by Stephen Hough's
other life as a concert pianist and composer, the book's structure
echoes a complex musical composition, with returning themes and
motifs as the story unfolds. Melodies are hinted at rather than
fully sung. Ideas are deliberately left incomplete. Hough leaves
readers to fill in the blanks and experience the work through their
own unique perspectives. Beautifully produced, The Final Retreat is
a visual and creative masterpiece that will linger in the mind like
a haunting melody.
Winner of the Royal Philharmonic Award for Storytelling 2020 'A
rich, endlessly fascinating book.' Philip Pullman 'One pleasure
after another.' Gramophone 'The delightful musings of a wise and
worldly polymath.' Financial Times, Books of the Year Stephen Hough
is indisputably one of the world's leading pianists, winning global
acclaim and numerous awards for his concerts and recordings, as
well as being a writer and composer. In Rough Ideas, Hough writes
about music and the life of a musician, from exploring the broader
aspects of what it is to walk out onto a stage or to make a
recording, to specialist tips from deep inside the practice room.
He also writes vividly about people, places, literature and art,
and touches on more controversial subjects, such as the possibility
of the existence of God, and the challenge involved in being a gay
Catholic. Rough Ideas is an illuminating and absorbing introduction
into the life and mind of one of our great cultural figures.
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