Stephen Hough

Hough in Cleveland in 2010

Stephen Andrew Gill Hough ( /ˈhʌf/; born 22 November 1961) is a British-born classical pianist, composer and writer. He became an Australian citizen in 2005 and thus has dual nationality (his father was born in Australia in 1926).

Biography

Hough was born in Heswall (then in Cheshire) on the Wirral Peninsula, and grew up in Hoylake, where he began piano lessons at the age of five. In 1978, he was a finalist in the BBC Young Musician of the Year Competition and won the piano section. In 1982, he won the Terence Judd Award in England. In 1983, he took first prize at the Naumburg International Piano Competition in New York.

Hough holds a Master's degree from the Juilliard School and was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship in 2001. He has studied with Heather Slade-Lipkin, Gordon Green, and Derrick Wyndham. He is also a notable composer and transcriber, and often includes his own works in his recitals. The premiere of his cello concerto, written for Steven Isserlis, took place in March 2007, and in the summer of the same year Westminster Abbey and Westminster Cathedral performed masses he wrote for them. In 2009 his trio for piccolo, contrabassoon and piano ('Was mit den Traenen Geschieht') was premiered at the Philharmonie in Berlin by members of the Berlin Philharmonic.

He is an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music in London, where he is a visiting Professor, and a Fellow of the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, where he is the International Chair of piano studies.

Performances

Hough performs as a recitalist and chamber musician, and has appeared as a soloist with major orchestras around the world including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Toronto Symphony, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic, the English Chamber Orchestra, the NHK Symphony Orchestra, Malaysian Philharmonic, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Nashville Symphony, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and the Singapore Symphony Orchestra. He has appeared at festivals worldwide including Salzburg, Edinburgh, Aldeburgh, Mostly Mozart (New York), Sapporo, Ravinia, Blossom, Tanglewood, Aspen, Hollywood Bowl and Saratoga.

Recordings

He has made over 50 CDs, one of his most notable being a set of the four Rachmaninoff Piano Concertos and the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, recorded during live performances with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra under the baton of then music director Andrew Litton, which have been compared to the recordings by the composer himself. These recordings won him his seventh Gramophone Award as well as the Classical BRIT Critics Award.

His recording of the five Saint-Saëns concertos won the Gramophone Record of the Year in 2001, and was later voted the Gold Disc, "winner of winners" in a poll commemorating 30 years of the award.

Teaching and writing

He is a visiting professor of piano at the Royal Academy of Music in London and the International Chair of Piano Studies at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. He was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2001, joining prominent writers and scientists who have made significant contributions in their fields.

He joined the Roman Catholic Church when he was 19. He has written about his homosexuality and its relationship with both his music-making and his religion. He has also published The Bible as Prayer: a handbook for lectio divina. He is a former member of Opus Dei.

In 2008 he won the Sixth International Poetry Competition.

He has a blog at the Telegraph newspaper's website.

Selected discography

• Hummel: Piano Concerto No. 3 in B minor, Op.89; Piano Concerto No. 2 in A minor, Op.85: English Chamber Orchestra (Chandos 1987)
• Stephen Hough: Liszt (Virgin Classics, 1988)
• My Favorite Things: Virtuoso Encores (Musicmasters, 1988)
• Xaver Scharwenka: Piano Concerto No. 4 in F minor and Emil von Sauer: Piano Concerto No.1 in E minor (City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra conducted by Lawrence Foster, Hyperion, 1994 CDA66790)
• Piano Music by Federico Mompou (Hyperion, 1997)
• Brahms: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 2, BBC Symphony Orchestra (Virgin Classics 1998)
• Stephen Hough's New Piano Album (Hyperion, 1999)
• Saint-Saëns: The Complete Works for Piano and Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (Hyperion, 2001)
• Hummel: Piano Sonatas (Hyperion, 2003)
• Rachmaninoff: Piano Concertos Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4; Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini; Andrew Litton/Dallas Symphony Orchestra (Hyperion CDA67501/2)
• The Stephen Hough Piano Collection (Hyperion, 2005)
• Liszt: Années de pèlerinage - "Première Année: Suisse", S. 160 (Hyperion, 2005)
• Stephen Hough's Spanish Album (Hyperion 2006)
• George Tsontakis: Man of Sorrows for piano & orchestra (Hyperion 2007)
• Mozart Album (Hyperion 2007)
• Stephen Hough in recital (2009)
• Chopin: Late Masterpieces (Hyperion 2010)
• Tchaikovsky: Complete music for piano and orchestra (Hyperion 2010)

External links

• Stephen Hough Official Website
• Hyperion Website: includes audio samples
• Stephen Hough's blog at The Telegraph (UK)
• Twitter page