Speaking of Faith (From the Keyboard)

Pianist Stephen Hough, who's been dazzling our audiences lately (and will be doing so again this week, as we work on a continuing project to record all of Tchaikovsky's piano concertos live in concert for a CD set to be released next year,) is someone I've always admired greatly as a musician, but never thought much about as a person. This is pretty common for an orchestra musician - for the most part, we don't get to know our soloists personally. (After all, since there are close to 100 of us, and we're only on the same stage with a soloist for a few hours, it would be positively oppressive for any number of us to try to engage socially with a guest.)

But Minnesota Public Radio's Brian Newhouse, who hosts our weekly live radio broadcasts, frequently gets the chance to sit down with each of our soloists, and occasionally, he surprises me with the direction he takes the interview. For instance, it seems that the man I've thought of only as a supremely gifted pianist also has a deeply religious side that he's quite happy to talk about. He's even written a book about it.

This is a pretty unusual thing in the classical music world. Not musicians having a religious life, of course, but being willing to talk publicly about it. Religion has become such a contentious issue in recent years that I think most of us would no sooner speak to the press about it than we would offer up our views on presidential politics or Roe vs. Wade.

But Hough has a remarkably easy way of talking about his faith, and it comes across as so genuine that I can't imagine anyone ever begrudging him his desire to share it. The whole conversation's worth listening to, but here's my favorite line. As soon as I heard it, I thought of a cousin of mine who's been a Maryknoll missionary in South Korea for most of his adult life, and who would probably agree with every word...

"What's so wonderful about spiritual life is that there are really no experts in it, and I think the ones who spend their whole lives doing it feel like beginners..."