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 recent and upcoming highlights include performances with the BBC Symphony, London Philharmonic, Hallé, Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg, Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo, Sydney Symphony, Seoul Philharmonic, Dallas and St Louis Symphonies, New York Philharmonic and The Cleveland orchestras. In 2018 he will be Artist-in-Residence at the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, performing a cycle of Beethoven concertos, and will give recitals at New York’s Carnegie Hall and London’s Royal Festival Hall (International Piano Series).

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 sixty 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, and the Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet.

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

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

Stephen Hough - Tchaikovsky Piano Concertos disc (excerpt) © Hyperion

Stephen Hough - Chopin: Waltz in A Flat major (excerpt) © Hyperion

“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)