Stephen Hough received 1996's Record of the Year. David Fanning went to meet him to talk about his latest Hyperion releases

I'm strictly forbidden to mention the make of car Stephen Hough arrives in. But he doesn't embargo the fact that his own vehicle, temporarily off the road, is a restored 1956 Austin A30. Should we link that, I wonder, with his slightly formal dress and his impeccable manners and say that he projects the image of an old-fashioned English gentleman? Only if that's understood entirely as a compliment. His music-making reflects all the positive aspects of that image - clarity, intelligence, good taste and natural poise - combined with a startling virtuosity far removed from old-fashioned English 'musicality'.

After a very English pre-prandial cup of tea, and my old-fashioned fumblings with the DAT recorder, we settle down to business. I remind him that the last time we sat on opposite sides of a microphone we were putting together a radio tribute for Cherkassky's eightieth birthday. A casual glance at the Hough discography, with its mixture of standard classics, ultrasweet bon-bons and virtuoso showpieces, might even suggest a touch of the Cherkasskys.

"Well, if someone said that my repertoire was similar to Cherkassky's, my first thought would be, 'Ah, marvellous, someone who can feel as comfortable playing late Schubert as a Godowsky transcription'. But this is something I'm very sensitive about, because it's very easy to be put in a pigeon-hole, and I'm claustrophobic about pigeon-holes!"

But what about those megavirtuoso, musically rather dubious pieces, like the Hummel concertos, with which Hough burst on to the recording scene ten years ago (gaining the 1987 Gramophone Concerto Award), the Sauer and Scharwenka concertos (Gramophone Record of the Year in 1996), and such fingerbreaking solo pieces as César Franck's Grand caprice?

Stephen Hough concedes that for all his affection for the Franck Caprice it does have "moments of laughable banality". And he reassures me that he can't just toss such things off. "To get something from scratch to a basic playing standard, and then from there to the stage where I become really identified with it, is about the same distance. You can sight-read the passages [speak for yourself, Stephen], but to get them so that the chords are all weighted exactly as I want them to be, and the bass with its own life and colour, the melody shaped as I want, takes weeks and months of rather frustrating work. To play the Hummel concertos a few notches slower by the metronome - which could be perfectly recordable - is one thing, but then to take them up to a quicker tempo is not just a little bit more difficult; it involves a whole different technical equipment and set of reflexes ... Actually I do very little of this [post-classical virtuoso] repertoire. I'm more interested really in the later pianist-composers who made recordings themselves, so that my interest in their playing extends into my interest in their music and how that fits in."

And Mendelssohn: does he agree that along with the flashy fingerwork there's more substance and character here than with Hummel? "Certainly. There's always a spark of genius, even in Mendelssohn's less interesting music. It's like a person whose eyes have just that little sparkle or sense of humour that can elevate even a mundane statement. We've done 'The Complete Published Music for Piano and Full Orchestra', and it's certainly not all even in quality. The two concertos are undoubtedly greater, while the other pieces come closer to Hummel. There's the Capriccio brillant, the Rondo brillant and the Serenade and Allegro giocoso, which is the latest and darkest, a wonderful piece, although the giocoso comes quite quickly, and it's almost alarming to have a jaunty tune after the melancholy of the Serenade. In the concertos Mendelssohn always manages to keep the big picture in mind, unlike Hummel where you get endless passages where he's just sort of showing off. With Mendelssohn, however glittering the virtuosity, it's always tied in with the musical argument. The G minor [No. I] must be one of the earliest concertos without a cadenza - the idea probably comes from Hummel actually - and there are two reasons: one is, not to break the flow of the movement, the other is that the virtuosity is all contained within the movement itself."

Is the D minor equally fresh, or does it have different qualities? "It's actually much harder to play. It's harder technically, although it doesn't sound it, because where the G minor fits under the fingers beautifully, the D minor is just that little bit more awkward. Also it doesn't have the same immediate lyrical engaging quality as the G minor. But I think it's a more profound piece. The first movement is probably the greatest movement of all the Mendelssohn concertos. The second movement is an adagio rather than an andante, and it's none too easy to keep a sense of flow and natural pulse, because the material doesn't of itself carry you along. Then the last movement too inhabits a much shier kind of world than the G minor, more subtle. And all these awkward fast repeated chords! On the modern piano the key has almost twice as far to travel as on an instrument of Mendelssohn's time. I've done the Capriccio brillant quite a lot in concert. It's the earliest piece, but it's almost my favourite. It has that fiery quality of Mendelssohn's which I find very contagious. In fact I kept coming across the marking con fuoco in these pieces. I counted 21 con fuocos altogether, seven in the fast section of the Capriccio brillant alone." So we should expect the sparks to fly? "That's certainly the spirit we've tried to capture."

We move on to Stephen Hough's new solo disc, of pieces by the Catalan composer, Federico Mompou. I recall learning one of these for a Grade VI or VII Associated Board exam - rather beautiful, drifty music, without bar-lines, but with whimsical Satiesque markings, and I wonder whether this is typical of Mompou's style.

"His is an amazing world, a tiny world, but so rich, so individual and so personal. It's quite difficult to describe, but I've just begun the booklet-notes for the CD, so I've been gathering my thoughts over the last two years, looking for analogies and points of contact. For instance, there's a wonderful little poem I came across by Paul Claudel, something like: 'Hush! Say one more word and the world begins again.' Mompou himself uses the idea of silence in his big set of pieces Música callada ("Music of silence"). The idea is that the real music somehow begins when it's over, when the harmonies. are dying away. It's music of incredible concentration, contemplation and simplicity: All the clichés and baggage of modern life are tossed to one side."

There's a striking visual similarity in some of Mompou's scores to Satie. So is the feeling at all Satiesque? "Superficially yes, and Mompou was very influenced by Satie, no question. But the personalities are diametrically opposed. With Satie there's always a kind of humorous cynicism, a mocking quirkiness. Mompou is far more modest and shy. Mompou would never poke fun at anything. There's a kindness to Mompou's music which isn't in Satie. Whereas Satie's eyes narrow in humour, Mompou's are wide open like a young child's. And it's a similar experience to playing with a child; all your adult pretences have to melt away. Not that there's anything childish about Mompou - the emotions he's trying to uncover are profound in the extreme. And it's not music without suffering; particularly in the Música callada, where you find markings like 'with anguish'. But it's this rediscovery of innocence which is the key; it's the garden of Eden, almost. Because of the simplicity you have to rediscover the wonder of a simple chord. Often he'll take a chord with, say, an added sixth - there's one piece from the Cants magics which is entirely made up of that. You can tell that he just loved the sound of chords on the piano. A lot of Mompou's pieces are simply about that. He pares music down to the point where there's nothing left no barlines, no key signatures, no time signatures, pages blank. So what do you do? It's a challenge from that point of view. He recorded all his pieces wonderfully, although he was very old. To judge from that he was a great pianist. He had a gorgeous sound and a wonderful sense of rhythmic freedom. You couldn't conceive putting a metronome to his music. In fact he was asked what you should do with his music and he just said, 'Well, it's all so free'. He meant free rhythmically, but also free from pretence."

Is it a problem selecting the repertoire when so much of it is slow and dreamy? "Well, I wanted to focus on cycles of pieces - the Charmes, the Cants magics, the Dialogues, the Landscapes [Paisajes]. They're the weirdest of his pieces, strange, pure, somehow off-centre. So that they don't sound all the same I made a kind of sandwich with the Cancons i dansas and the Preludes, and I end with a prelude for left hand alone, one of the most extraordinary works, without a bar-line in sight. It has this marvellous sense of improvisation, and Mompou's own recording is really worth hearing. It really sounds as though he'd just written the piece right there in the recording studio."

If this first Mompou disc is a success, would Hough consider a sequel or even an intégrale? "No, I'm not really an intégrale sort of person. But I'd like to do the complete Música callada, the last work he wrote. It would make a whole CD. There are four books of even more obscure pieces than on my recording. They reach very close to an almost early-Schoenbergian atonality. His favourite chords are still hovering around, but they have become so altered they don't sound like the same composer. The cycle was inspired by the poetry of St John of the Cross, again with this idea of music as silence, and there's a very interesting contemplative-mystical quality. I like other Mompou pieces, but I think it's best to stick with the things you feel closest to. That was true of Hummel, too. Chandos wanted the other Hummel concertos, but I don't actually like them as much. I will be doing some solo Hummel for Hyperion, though. There are two great solo sonatas, a big F sharp minor, a sprawling romantic Sturm und Drang piece that Liszt used to play; and there's the later D major, which is strangely enough more classical."

And other future projects? "One of the most exciting prospects, is a live Rachmaninov cycle, with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and Andrew Litton. That would be a first. And that's typical of Hyperion. They're interested in the standard repertoire, so long as there's some good idea behind it. For instance we're about to begin a Mozart cycle, and the idea with Mark Wigglesworth was to get living composers to write cadenzas for them, so that it had a kind of mix of old and new. I'm also going to do some Schubert sonatas, mixing a late sonata, an early one and an unfinished one."

Stephen Hough is based for half the year in New York, and one fruit of that is a planned disc of contemporary American works, "including a 69-page piece by the Greek-American composer, George Tsontakis, which I'm every excited about, for all sorts of reasons. It's going to be hard to programme in concert, but it's monumental and involving and I can't imagine it wouldn't engage an audience. It has the same ecstasy and obsessiveness as late Beethoven."

Any chance of more recordings with Steven Isserlis? "Well, of course that depends on BMG as well, but I hope so. We've played the Rachmaninov Sonata, for instance, and we'd love to do that."

And conducting? Will Hough be one of these pianists who has done everything by the age of 50 and takes up the baton? "I can't imagine being able to exhaust the piano repertoire. If I'm ever depressed it's because I know I'll never be able to learn as much as I'd like to. Sometimes in a Mozart concerto rehearsal when the tuttis are done in a way that I hate, maybe I'd be tempted. But Mozart with an inspiring conductor is a plus, because you get all the joy of chamber music. That's my ideal. I've loved working with Mark Wigglesworth in recent years, because he loves discussing, experimenting and talking about things. But I've also had the experience of a conductor cracking open what's obviously a brand new score as the rehearsal begins. Is it the D minor or the F major? It doesn't much matter which it is because they're both in four! That's when you want to conduct from the keyboard." I won't even bother asking for names...

Hough has recently co-presented Rachmaninov as Composer of the Week on BBC Radio 3, taken masterclasses at Chetham's School of Music and appeared with Steven Isserlis on Radio 4's book programme, A Good Read. Life is clearly not lacking in variety.

"And I do think it's important to allow space to not play, not to have music always in the ears. When I'm not playing I almost want to get away from music so that I can return to it in a fresher way. I do love writing, and I've got a few short stories sketched that I'd love to find the time to do more of. Certainly reading is a great joy, but not musicological things, although there are books on music which it's important to read."

Dinner calls, and our conversation turns to old times at the Royal Northern College of Music, piano teachers, the Juilliard School, social life in New York, and piano repertoire (I think I may have switched him on to Galina Ustvolskaya). Never an ill-considered word comes into his conversation, just as there's never an ill-considered note in his piano-playing.