Stephen hough scriabin biography

Hough’s discography of over 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. 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 begins his 2024/25 concert season with his 30th 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.

What began as a film score blossomed into a work premiered by the Utah Symphony and recorded with the Hallé Orchestra, weaving narrative themes—a baroness waltz here, a Copland‐inspired motif there—into a homage to Stefan Zweig’s bittersweet reflections on a vanished world.

Equally at home on the piano bench, at the composer’s desk, or behind the pen, Hough continually expands his creative horizons.

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.

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.

He is also on the faculty of The Juilliard School in New York.

Follow Stephen on Twitter @houghhough

One of the most distinctive artists of his generation, Sir Stephen Hough combines a distinguished career as a pianist with those of composer and writer.

Named by The Economist as one of Twenty Living Polymaths, Hough was the first classical performer to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship (2001).

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.

Steeped in the lineage of Cortot and Rachmaninoff, he blends the rubato and color of early twentieth‐century masters with a modern sensibility that informs both his performances and his writing. He has been a regular guest at festivals such as Aldeburgh, Aspen, Blossom, Edinburgh, La Roque d'Anthéron, Hollywood Bowl, Mostly Mozart, Salzburg, Tanglewood, Verbier, and the BBC Proms, where he has made 29 concerto appearances, including playing all of the works of Tchaikovsky for piano and orchestra, a series he later repeated with the Chicago Symphony.

Many of his catalogue of over 60 albums have garnered international prizes including the Deutsche Schallplattenpreis, Diapason d’Or, Monde de la Musique, several Grammy nominations, eight Gramophone Magazine Awards including ‘Record of the Year’ in 1996 and 2003, and the Gramophone ‘Gold Disc’ Award in 2008, which named his complete Saint-Saens Piano Concertos as the best recording of the past 30 years.

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. He has also written for The New York Times, The Telegraph, The Times, The Guardian and the Spectator. His 2005 live recording of the Rachmaninoff Piano Concertos was the fastest selling recording in Hyperion’s history, while his 1987 recording of the Hummel concertos remains Chandos’ best-selling disc to date.

Published by Josef Weinberger, Sir Stephen has composed works for orchestra, choir, chamber ensemble, organ, harpsichord and solo piano.

He has also written for The New York Times, The Telegraph, The Times, The Guardian and the Evening Standard.

A resident of London, 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, and holds the International Chair of Piano Studies at his alma mater, the Royal Northern College in Manchester.

His Gramophone‐winning recordings of Hummel concertos paved the way for decades of performing and recording, but it was during the pandemic that he embarked on a new path: composing his first piano concerto, The World of Yesterday. He has been commissioned by the Takacs Quartet, the Cliburn, CMS Lincoln Center, the Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet, the Gilmore Foundation, The Genesis Foundation, the Walter W.

Naumburg Foundation, London’s National Gallery, Wigmore Hall, Le Musée de Louvre and Musica Viva Australia among others.

A noted writer, Sir Stephen has contributed articles for The New York Times, the Guardian, The Times, Gramophone and BBC Music Magazine, and he wrote a blog for The Telegraph for seven years which became one of the most popular and influential forums for cultural discussion and for which he wrote over six hundred articles.

While recording a newly discovered Chopin waltz from the Morgan Library, he is also authoring essays on music, faith, and the human condition—reminding us that success isn’t about fame, but about growth, curiosity, and meaningful work.