More than 700 people gathered at the Barbican in London on Tuesday evening to hear pianist Stephen Hough perform his new composition commissioned by The Tablet to mark its 175th anniversary. As well as the premiere, the recital also included works by Schubert, Franck and Liszt but the highlight was Hough’s own sonata, Trinitas. Hough described his highly structured piece as “a symbol of dogma, rules which can liberate or enslave”, and explained that it was called Trinitas, the Latin for Trinity, because this was “another dogma, a theological ordering with numbers”. The audience included actor Simon Callow, Baroness (Sheila) Hollins and Pauline Gilbertson, director of the English Chamber Orchestra, who said Trinitas was an “enthralling new commission tha