Stephen Hough

Piano

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“Stephen Hough’s steady ascent to the summit of his profession exhibits equally supreme mastery of his instrument and the deep humanity from which it has flowered.”
(International Record Review)

On 1 June 2020, Stephen Hough re-opened Wigmore Hall, performing the UK’s first live classical music concert in a major venue since the nationwide lockdown in March. Later that summer he made his 29^th appearance at the BBC Proms performing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.2 with BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.

Other recent highlights include performances with New York and London Philharmonic orchestras, Wiener Symphoniker, Cleveland and Minnesota orchestras, and the Finnish Radio, Tokyo, Toronto, Singapore, Iceland and City of Birmingham Symphony orchestras. In the 2019/20 season, he spearheaded a five-concert Brahms series at Wigmore Hall, performing with Renaud Capuçon, Steven Isserlis, Michael Collins and the Castalian Quartet. Currently scheduled concerts in 2020/21 include concerto performances with the London Philharmonic and Royal Liverpool Philharmonic orchestras, NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover, St Louis, Cincinnati and Atlanta symphony orchestras, Seoul Philharmonic and the National Symphony Orchestra, Taiwan.

Hough was appointed CBE in the 2014 New Year’s Honours. A laureate of the MacArthur Fellowship and Royal Philharmonic Society, his extensive discography of over 60 CDs has garnered international accolades including the Diapason d’Or de l’Année and eight Gramophone Awards. His celebrated iPad app The Liszt Sonata was released by Touch Press in 2013. As a composer, he has been commissioned by Wigmore Hall, Musée du Louvre, London’s National Gallery, Westminster Abbey, Westminster Cathedral, the Genesis Foundation, Gilmore International Keyboard Festival, the Walter W. Naumburg Foundation, the Cliburn Foundation, Orquesta Sinfónica de Euskadi and the Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet. As an author, his first novel, The Final Retreat, was published by Sylph Editions in March 2018, and his collection of essays Rough Ideas: Reflections on Music and More – named one of Financial Times’ Book of the Year 2019 – was published by Faber & Faber in August 2019.

Stephen Hough - Chopin Saved My Life © Oxford Film and Television

Stephen Hough - Chopin: Waltz in A Flat minor (excerpt) © The Telegraph

Stephen Hough - Brahms: Concerto No. 1, 3rd movement (excerpt) © Hyperion

Stephen Hough - Beethoven: Piano Sonata Op.111, 1st movement (excerpt) © Hyperion

“This is a deeply rewarding and distinguished set of the Beethoven piano concertos. Stephen Hough, Hannu Lintu and the excellent FRSO are perceptive and stylish interpreters of the music.”

(John Quinn, MusicWeb International, April 2020)

“Stephen Hough delivered a forceful, dynamic reading of Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto, his flawless technique and natural manner of expressivity occasionally spiced with artfully drawn nuances so lightly wrought that they enhanced rather than detracted from the flow of the music, all bolstered by Hough ’s elegant manner.”

(Lewis M. Smoley, Classical Source, February 2019)

“Mendelssohn’s nonstop passage-work in the opening Allegro was etched with clarity and balance, while the heartfelt Andante was rendered with an almost visionary other-worldliness. The famous finale was a fine race to the finish, with Hough’s
fleet fingers driving the music.”

(Mark Satola, Cleveland.com, August 2018)

“Witty, wistful, extrovert, introspective and cheeky by turn, this is a masterclass in a certain style of piano-playing, and a dream of an album.”

(Jeremy Nicholas, Gramophone, July 2018)

“Hough took charge and drove the enormous first movement with impressive authority, cementing his position in the front rank of Britain’s pianists today.”

(Stephen Pritchard, The Guardian, August 2017)

“The man is an intellectual and physical pianistic powerhouse. He raises more issues and questions per piece than almost any other pianist I know. He flings out challenges to preconceptions. And he educates with every phrase. It was all of these things and more in Hough’s mesmerising probe into the heart and soul of [Schubert’s Sonata in A minor]. What we were hearing, in effect, was a masterclass in musical analysis and perception.”

(Michael Tumelty, The Glasgow Herald, August 2016)

“It’s hard not to be a little awestruck by the breadth of Stephen Hough’s passions, to say nothing of his talents. [He] is simply one of the most interesting musicians around.”

(David Weininger, Boston Globe, May 2015)

“Whatever Stephen Hough plays, he either distils its essence or finds something strikingly new to say about it, and so it was with his Debussy and Chopin programme. He delivered La plus que lente with a languid silkiness, hands seeming to sink onto the keys rather than striking them, and with Estampes created exquisite impressionism. To Chopin’s Ballades he brought his particular perfectionism, which resides in the scrupulous shaping of every phrase and weighing of every note.”

(Michael Church, The Independent, April 2015)

“Schumann’s Piano Concerto, with Stephen Hough as soloist, had been a performance of such startling freshness and clarity that one of the most familiar of all 19^th-century piano concertos seemed totally reimagined, with the sweep and vigour supplied by Andris Nelsons and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra as the perfect foil to Hough’s cool brilliance.”

(Andrew Clements, The Guardian, November 2014)