Enough, the title of Stephen Hough’s memoir, is something of a misnomer, even though it rhymes with his often-mispronounced surname. It’s not enough for Hough to be a concert pianist with a globetrotting career; he is also an adroit and versatile composer and here he reveals himself as an endearingly humorous, entrancingly lyrical writer.
“A writer is God,” says Hough admiringly, thinking of God – he is a Catholic convert – rather than claiming godlike powers for himself. He then quotes the Bible on the word being made flesh as “an idea floating in the air is caught, a concept becomes carnal”. The piano leaves ideas afloat, airily uncatchable: Hough’s book describes “the liquid lasso” of a stone thrown into a pond in Debussy’s Reflets dans l’eau, and in the notes to his recent recording of Federico Mompou’s Música Callada he remarks that these brief, whispery religious meditations evaporate as they are played. Defying the monochrome abstraction of the keyboard, Hough always sets himself to make sounds tell stories without words. In his reimagining, Tippett’s Piano Concerto proceeds from an orchestral rumbling “under the soil of the earth to the tinkle of arpeggios tracing a delicate tune above the treetops”.
Mompou may vaporise and Debussy may only ruffle the surface of the water, but playing the piano, as Hough describes it, is a strenuous physical workout. To write or type we need only the tips of our fingers and Hough smiles as he watches people “peck at iPhones” like sparrows. By contrast, he remembers the way Vladimir Horowitz “let his entire arm weight” sink on to a key, activating it with the same gently relentless force that snooker players use when pocketing a ball. A Steinway keyboard demands tough digits, applying pressure that varies between hammer blows and a feathery caress; trills require flexible wrists; without a controlling foot on the pedal, “the piano is lifeless, desiccated”.
Enough is valuable because it verbalises the abstract mystery of music, “free because it flies so high, suggesting answers to questions unasked”. But this is more than the autobiography of a virtuoso with a rarefied talent; Hough’s memories of growing up in Liverpool in the 1960s will have an echo in your own recollections of your earliest, most avidly impressionable years, no matter where or when you were born. The book is full of naive sensory delights, which tip over into blatant sensuality when Hough has an abrupt initiation into gay sex at the age of five. Smells waft off the pages, titillating or troubling the nose as the lofty art of music never does: the comforting aroma of grilled cheese, the leathery warmth exuded by a much-handled Bible. Tastes are just as potent, on occasion distastefully so, as when Hough likens some slimy overcooked sprouts to “comatose slugs”. His introduction to American fast food will make you drool: burgers oozing juice, pizzas whose curling triangles are “folded into a watering mouth”. Yes, there are some appetites that music cannot satisfy.
These Scenes from Childhood pass by as quickly as the miniatures in Mompou’s Scènes d’enfants, which Hough has recorded. Verbal snapshots track a “crescendo of panic” as milk dangerously bubbles on the hob or recreate the thrill of making nylon bedsheets spark, with “fireflies darting inside pyjamas”. The escape of a guinea pig is a small tragedy, unbearably intense as childhood woes always are. At one point, Hough studies his father’s penis, which casually flops out of his baggy shorts. He views “creation’s original multitasking organ” with an awe that is more metaphysical than sexual: here is “the member that made me”, lolling at its ease.
These excitements quieten down as infancy gives way to adolescence and young adulthood. Catholicism, Hough says, provided him with “discipline and serenity” – a boon for his mental and moral health, though it may have distanced him from music’s Dionysian frenzy. I wanted to hear more about his response to Birgit Nilsson’s “wild and mad” portrayal of Strauss’s Elektra in Georg Solti’s recording, which left him hyperventilating. But when his professional career begins, Hough’s over-sharing has to stop: what he has told us about his youthful truancies, fantasies and embarrassments, he decides at the end of the book, is quite enough for us to be going on with.
Enough: Scenes from Childhood by Stephen Hough is published by Faber (£18.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
