The Welsh denim brand and the concert pianist
Much-celebrated concert pianist Stephen Hough was used to almost non-stop global travel before the covid-19 pandemic and has said, for example, that lockdown led to his using the cooker in his kitchen for the first time in 20 years.
He clearly missed playing in concert halls around the world and spoke recently about a live concert being “an event that should change our lives”, with the audience as “part of it in a really intense way”.
Concert venues in the UK, where Stephen Hough is from, have begun to open up and he is very much in demand again. However, the cautious return of live audiences is happening only gradually and most of his recent performances have been for radio broadcasts only.
One, perhaps unexpected, consolation Mr Hough has been able to take from this is that radio audiences cannot see what the musicians are wearing. For a recording in Manchester at the start of June of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto Number 5, the ‘Emperor’ Concerto, Stephen Hough opted for jeans from Welsh denim brand Hiut.
The recording took place with the BBC Philharmonic orchestra in the hottest temperatures of the year so far in the Media City studios in Salford. Afterwards, conductor, Ben Gernon, said on social media that it had been “a wonderful and sweaty day”. Mr Hough responded by saying his Hiut jeans had held up very well and he went on to describe the brand as “thriving in Wales”, in spite of covid-19.
The concert will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on June 18.
