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)

Stephen Hough’s concerto highlights in 2019/20 include performances with the New York, Dallas, Toronto, Singapore, Iceland and BBC Scottish symphony orchestras, the Slovak Philharmonic, Radio Filharmonisch Orkest and Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. With the Malmö Symfoniorkester and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment he performs Liszt’s First and Second piano concertos, and in May – June 2020 he tours Beethoven’s Third, Fourth and Fifth piano concertos in China, performing with the China Philharmonic and Shanghai Symphony orchestras among others. Recent appearances include the Cleveland and Minnesota orchestras, Finnish Radio, City of Birmingham and Tokyo symphony orchestras, London Philharmonic and China Philharmonic orchestras, and the Wiener Symphoniker.

Recitals in 2019/20 span the US, Europe and beyond, including performances at the Taiwan National Concert Hall, The Cliburn, Caramoor, London’s Royal Festival Hall (International Piano Series) and Wigmore Hall (chamber residency featuring Steven Isserlis, Renaud Capuçon and Michael Collins, among others).

Hough was appointed CBE in the 2014 New Year’s Honours. A laureate of the MacArthur Fellowship and Royal Philharmonic Society Award, his catalogue of over 60 CDs has garnered accolades including 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, Orquesta Sinfónica de Euskadi and the Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet. His first novel, The Final Retreat, was published by Sylph Editions in March 2018, and in August 2019 his Rough Ideas: Reflections on Music and More was published by Faber & Faber.

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

“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)