Vita Breve, our Personal Recital

 

Doug writes:

We couldn’t resist Stephen Hough’s new album, Vita Breve. Remembering his concerts in All Saints at the Hertfordshire Festival of Music a few years ago the appeal of this new collection made it a must-have. Remembering his impeccable playing on the Yamaha piano which he had arranged to be installed specially, and the hyper-enthusiastic applause after his epic Beethoven, we splashed out again. Yes, life is short – but at least we now have something of a Hough collection.

Stephen Hough has decided to engage with the theme of death, which we often ignore – despite the daily dose of figures in these hard times. Liszt’s “Funerailles” from Harmonies poetiques and religieuses and Chopin’s Piano Sonata no2 in B flat minor – known as the funeral march – set the scene, with his own Sonata No.4 (Vita Breve) following, ending with a version of J.S. Bach’s Ave Maria from Prelude No1, often used at….final celebrations.

Hough notes that the reality of death is not shied away from in the arts, and we should not either. He certainly doesn’t. As he says, it is “the final piece on everyone’s recital programme”. I am going to listen to it on Ash Wednesday, because it is both a reminder and an uplifting contemplation of the fact that death is our mortal lot but we have hope in the hard-won victory of Christ who battles against sin and temptation and lays down his life as a sacrifice. Vita Breve – yes, we remember and learn; eternity is beyond this mortal existence and we are invited to the great all-embracing feast where pain, sin and suffering are no more – but life with the God of Love.

 

(Stephen Hough’s recent albums, including Vita Breve, are available on the Hyperion website. MP3s can be downloaded and CDs purchased, but there is no streaming facility).

Images of the grave in darkness are contrasted with the eternal light of Christ and underscored with the ancient Kiev chant, the Kontakion of the Departed, and the chimes and chant of the Orthodox monks in Ukraine.

Give rest, O Christ, to thy servant with thy saints:
where sorrow and pain are no more;
neither sighing but life everlasting.
Thou only art immortal, the creator and maker of man:
and we are mortal formed from the dust of the earth,
and unto earth shall we return:
for so thou didst ordain,
when thou created me saying:
“Dust thou art und unto dust shalt thou return.”
All we go down to the dust;
and weeping o’er the grave we make our song:
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.