Audio: Listen to the winner and shortlist | Commentary: Teutonic giants snubbed

Chocolate bars and a little bit of help from the internet community helped to crown a relatively unknown British pianist as the creator of the best classical music album of the past 30 years.

Stephen Hough, a softly spoken pianist from Cheshire, emerged as the favourite in a Times Online competition that received more than 6,000 votes. His rendition of Camille Saint-Saëns’s complete works for piano and orchestra triumphed over classical Titans including Herbert von Karajan and Nikolaus Harnoncourt to win the first Gramophone magazine Gold Disc award.

The pianist, who attributes the vivacity of his recording to the sugar rush he received from eating chocolate bars between takes, said that he almost gave up on the album after setbacks.

“Of all the recordings I have made, this one had the most teething problems,” he said. On the first day the producer failed to appear because he had been double-booked. A second attempt fell through because of renovations at Birmingham Symphony Hall, where it was being recorded, and a third time Sakari Oramo, the conductor, fell ill with food poisoning.

Hough believes that the setbacks may have strengthened his performance. “It was a bit like having a problem child – they get more attention than the ones that behave themselves.”

He added: “Because we had so many problems with it, I must say I wasn’t quite sure [if it was good]. It’s a bit like making a film. You see that some of your shots are on the floor and you wonder what it is going to sound like when it comes together.”

But Hough’s victory was emphatic: he beat his nearest rival, Richard Hickox’s recording of Vaughan Williams’s London Symphony, by more than 2,000 votes.

He said that a vital ingredient may have been a Mars bar that he ate to overcome a lull that sometimes hits him after lunch. “I usually have quite a lot of chocolate around. It is a way to have a bit of manic energy. You’ve got to create a real excitement at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, when people wish they were doing something else. You have to have a core of energy, an inner fire that helps you be creative.”

He had also not been shy about urging his friends to vote for him.

The shortlist of five pieces, which also featured Harnoncourt’s Beethoven symphonies and the Beaux Arts Trio’s complete piano trios by Haydn, was drawn up by experts from Gramophone magazine, who selected their preferred discs from the journal’s Record of the Year winners since 1977.

Hough was initially reluctant to perform all five works and “went off in a huff” when Hyperion, his music label, rejected his wish to record only three.

He returned to the project because he believed that he could improve on existing recordings, but said that it was not easy. “It is a bit like running 100 metres in so many seconds. To take off two seconds is not just hard. It is a whole new dimension.”

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