Stephen Hough

Biography

Named by The Economist as one of Twenty Living Polymaths, Sir Stephen Hough combines a distinguished career of a concert pianist with those of a composer and writer.  In recognition of his contribution to cultural life, he became the first classical performer to be given a MacArthur Fellowship, and was awarded a Knighthood for Services to Music in the Queen’s Birthday Honours 2022.

In a career spanning over 40 years, Stephen Hough has played regularly with most of the world’s leading orchestras, including televised and filmed appearances with the Berlin, London, China, Seoul and New York Philharmonic Orchestras, and the Concertgebouw, Budapest Festival and the NHK Symphony Orchestras.  He has been a regular guest of recital series and festivals including Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium, London’s Royal Festival Hall, Salzburg, Verbier, La Roque-d’Anthéron, Aspen, Tanglewood, Aldeburgh and Edinburgh.

He began his 2024/25 concert season with his 30^th appearance at the BBC Proms, performing at Last Night of the Proms to a live audience of 6,000 and televised audience of 3.5 million.  Over the course of the following 12 months Hough performed over 80 concerts on four continents, opening Philharmonia Orchestra’s season at the Royal Festival Hall, performances with the Cleveland Orchestra, performing a solo recital at Barbican Centre and giving the world premiere of his Willa Cather-inspired Piano Quintet at Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall.  Following the 2024 world premiere of his own Piano Concerto (The World of Yesterday), named after Stefan Zweig’s memoir, Hough brought the work to Adelaide, Bournemouth, Oregon, Singapore and Vermont Symphony Orchestras.

Hough’s discography of 70 recordings has garnered awards including the Diapason d’Or de l’Année, several Grammy nominations, and eight Gramophone Awards including Record of the Year and the Gold Disc. For Hyperion he has recorded the complete piano concertos of Beethoven, Brahms, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Rachmaninov, Saint-Saëns and Tchaikovsky as well as celebrated solo recordings of the Final Piano Pieces of Brahms, Chopin’s complete nocturnes, waltzes, ballades and scherzi, as well as recitals of Schumann, Schubert, Franck, Debussy and Mompou.  Upcoming releases include a Liszt Album, a recital of encores, including arrangements made for Lang Lang’s Disney project, and Hough’s own Piano Concerto.

As a composer, Hough’s Fanfare Toccata was commissioned for the 2022 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition and performed by all 30 competitors.  His 2021 String Quartet No.1 Les Six Rencontres, was written for and recorded by the Takács Quartet for Hyperion Records.  Hough’s body of songs, choral and instrumental works have been commissioned by Musée du Louvre, National Gallery of London, Westminster Abbey, Westminster Cathedral, the Wigmore Hall, the Genesis Foundation, Gilmore International Keyboard Festival, the Walter W. Naumburg Foundation, BBC Sounds, and the Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet. His music is published by Josef Weinberger Ltd.

As an author, Hough’s memoir Enough: Scenes from Childhood, was published by Faber & Faber in Spring 2023. It follows his 2019 collection of essays Rough Ideas: Reflections on Music and More which received a Royal Philharmonic Society Award and was named one of the Financial Times’ Books of the Year. His novel The Final Retreat was published in 2018 (Sylph Editions). He has also written for The New York Times, The Telegraph, The Times, The Guardian and the Evening Standard. Hough is an Honorary Bencher of the Middle Temple, an Honorary Member of the Royal Philharmonic Society, an Honorary Fellow of Cambridge University’s Girton College, the International Chair of Piano Studies and a Companion of the Royal Northern College of Music, and is on the faculty of The Juilliard School in New York.
 

Photo Credit: Sim Canetty-Clarke