A collection of exquisite Brahmsian miniatures: brief meditations on last things before—in Stephen Hough’s own words—‘the light fades and the final cigar is extinguished’.

The setting is domestic, with neither audience nor the capacity for one. Music, neatly open, lies on the piano rack. A solitary figure looks out of the window: pensive (we know she's pensive even though we can’t see her face), lost in thought, quietly watching the passers-by in the street below who remain out of sight to the rest of us.

The reality is perhaps rather more prosaic: the woman in the picture is Ida, the painter's wife, and the setting is their house in Copenhagen at Strandgade 30, their address from 1898-1909. A single, isolated figure, often female and often seen from behind, is a recurring theme in the work of Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864-1916) as is the sparsely furnished interior lit by a milky, diffuse daylight. And yet many of his paintings seem to imply some kind of hidden theatrical narrative, the sparse, highly charged elements promising the viewer—although never quite delivering—an immanent, intangible revelation.

There are parallels here with Brahms's late piano pieces, the same qualities of sadness and simplicity to be found abundantly in both. As Stephen Hough writes, this is 'salon music taken to the nth degree. Yet 'salon' suggests a (small) audience. I don’t see anyone in the room with Brahms … these short masterpieces are some release, some exploration, some passing of time as the light fades'. Could there be a more emotionally apt setting than that realized by Hammershøi?