Stephen Hough: Federico Mompou: Música callada
Hyperion Records

In a 2019 essay, pianist Stephen Hough memorably described Federico Mompou's music as “the music of evaporation.” It's an apt word to describe the Catalan composer's material and specifically the twenty-eight miniatures on Hough's second all-Mompou album, Música callada (Silent Music). All four volumes in the series, written between 1959 and 1967 and the last music he published in his lifetime, are rendered with exquisite care by the London-based pianist and Juilliard School faculty member, whose first foray into the composer's world was captured twenty-five years ago on the Gramophone-winning Piano Music by Federico Mompou.

Elaborating further, Hough wrote that in the music of Mompou (1893-1987) the usual details of notation all seem to fade away; further to that, things that customarily preoccupy a composer—development, counterpoint, drama, et al.—are downplayed in favour of a disarming simplicity and transparency of expression. To an even degree than usual, the pianist acts as a conduit to render Mompou's art into physical form. Given Hough's lifelong investigation of the composer's music, no more sympathetic interpreter might be imagined.

Characterizing Mompou's music in such a manner suggests it would fit comfortably alongside Debussy's, Pärt's, Fauré's, Feldman's, and Satie's, and there's something to that. His is even more hazy and nebulous than theirs, however. The individual pieces don't so much resolve as inhabit a brief space, and an open-ended quality is favoured over demarcated shape. Make no mistake, however: Mompou was rigorous in his writing of the twenty-eight pieces, no matter how spontaneous they might sound when breathed into life by Hough. If an improvisatory character emerges, it's more illusion than reality. And as soothing as the oft-serene settings are, subtle undercurrents of dissonance are present too.

The pieces are, as stated, miniatures, mere wisps of sound in some cases (fittingly, Mompou said of the material, “This music is silent as if heard from within”), yet the release weighs in at a substantial sixty-eight minutes; in assessing the material and recording, one is best to broach it from a cumulative angle rather than consider one piece at a time. Recorded in October 2020 at St Silas the Martyr in the inner London area of Kentish Town, Música callada makes for a fine complement to the earlier Mompou release as well as recent ones Hough issued featuring works by Schumann, Chopin, and Schubert.

“Angelico,” the haunting, chant-like opening setting in Primer Cuaderno (1959), is simplicity incarnate. Single-note melodies intone delicately, their direction unpredictable and the mystery of their meaning intact. As enigmatic is the subsequent “Lent,” which flirts with dissonance in its tone clusters; “Placide,” on the other hand, is like a gentle ray of sunshine, even if here too a faint hint of disturbance lurks at the edges of the frame. Explorations of mood and style ensue thereafter, “Affitto e penoso” contemplative and brooding, the fleeting “Semplice” almost child-like, and the first “Lento” inviting comparison to Satie and Chopin.

Advancing to Segundo Cuaderno (1962), “Allegretto” registers strongly for its robustness, uplifting theme, and harmonic daring. Trilling figures sprinkled throughout the second book's “Lento” suggest Satie even more than the two in the first set. While “Tranquillo: Très calme” does sparkle with moments of tranquility, it also erupts with dissonant gestures. The second volume's “Calme” exudes the dreamlike allure of a Bill Evans ballad treatment; the third set's same-titled piece, by comparison, is Debussy-esque in its stillness. With four of its seven parts “Lento”-related, Cuarto Cuaderno (1967) is largely pensive and sombre, even if the closing “Lento” is emphatic and dignified.

Despite the temporal gaps separating the writing of the volumes, each transitions fluidly into the next. For example, the third set's closing “Lento,” which suggests the late-night inner journey of a jazz pianist during a club's closing hour, segues seamlessly into the fourth's hushed opener “Molto lento e tranquillo.” In fact, were one to redistribute the pieces and collect them into new volume arrangements, they would probably function as effectively in those revised groupings. As Philip Clark astutely notes in text accompanying the release, Mompou eschews “grand moments of harmonic arrival or climax” in Música callada, and in that way the composer's deceptively demanding music challenges conventions associated with classical writing and listening reception.

March 2023