Hough’s real specialities are the pinnacles of the repertoire: the kind of stuff once described as ‘music almost too good to be played’. Brahms’s final piano works, 20 in all, composed from 1890-92, were regarded by the composer as his swansong. These exquisite miniatures, lasting between two and five minutes each, cover a huge variety of moods, and are often astonishingly passionate and melodic. Typically, on Hough’s new CD of them, everything is newly thought out. I have known this music since I discovered the recordings of the American pianist Julius Katchen almost 50 years ago. Listening to Hough, I was constantly delighted by the freshness of his phrasing, so different from many of his colleagues, yet never just for the sake of it. Few make the case for these elusive masterpieces as well as Hough. This music plainly means a lot to him. In a sleeve note he concludes: ‘In Brahms, as the nineteenth century and his life begin to close down, the bearded pianist sits at the piano alone. These short masterpieces are some release, some exploration, some passing of time as the light fades and the final cigar is extinguished.’