Stephen Hough (GB)

About

Also known as: Sir Stephen Andrew Gill Hough

Sir Stephen Hough is one of those rare musicians who operates comfortably across performance, composition, and writing, and does all three at a genuinely high level. The British Australian pianist has recorded more than 60 albums, and his live set of the four Rachmaninoff concertos with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra became something of a benchmark, drawing comparisons to Rachmaninoff's own recordings and earning Hough a Gramophone Award. His Saint Saëns piano concerto recording went one better, winning Gramophone Record of the Year in 2001 and later being voted the Gold Disc in a poll marking 30 years of the award. Hough has long championed composers who get overlooked, including Hummel, Scharwenka, and Mompou, and his own compositional output is substantial. He has written four piano sonatas, a cello concerto for Steven Isserlis, Mass settings performed at both Westminster Abbey and Westminster Cathedral, and a piano concerto commissioned by the Utah Symphony. The Takacs Quartet recorded his string quartet for Hyperion. At the 2024 Last Night of the Proms he accompanied soprano Angel Blue in his own arrangements of two spirituals, then played Saint Saëns's Egyptian Concerto and finished with a fantasia on Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. Hard to top that for range.