Stephen Hough Libri

An engrossing and frank coming-of-age memoir from one of the world's leading pianists. "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.

Focusing on the practice of Lectio divina, this book serves as a guide for integrating prayer into a hectic lifestyle. It encourages readers to engage with brief passages from the Bible, promoting a simple and contemplative approach to prayer. Through this method, individuals can deepen their spiritual connection amidst the demands of modern life.

Stephen Hough is indisputably one of the world's leading pianists, winning global acclaim and numerous awards, both for his concerts and recordings. He is also a writer, composer and painter and was recently described by the Economist as one of '20 Living Polymaths'. As an international performer he spends much of his life at airports, on planes, and in hotel rooms - and this book expands notes he has made, in his words, 'during that dead time on the road'. He writes about music and the life of a musician, from exploring the broader aspects of what it is to walk out on to a stage or to make a recording, to specialist tips from deep inside the practice room: how to trill, how to pedal, how to practise. He also writes vividly about people he's known, places he's travelled to, books he's read, paintings he's seen; and touches on more controversial subjects, such as assisted suicide and abortion. Even religion is there - the possibility of the existence of God, problems with some biblical texts and the challenge involved in being a gay Catholic. An illuminating and absorbing introduction into the life and mind of one of our great cultural figures.

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.