Sir Stephen Hough is widely regarded as one of the most important and distinctive pianists of his generation. From highly acclaimed performances of central repertoire in recital, in recording, and with the world’s greatest orchestras, to an interest in contemporary and neglected nineteenth-century works, he integrates the imagination and pianistic colour of the past with the scholarship and intellectual rigour of the present, illuminating the very essence of the music he plays. He was awarded a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship in 2001 in recognition of his achievements, and he was knighted in the Queen’s Jubilee Birthday Honours list in 2022.

Since winning first prize in the Naumburg International Piano Competition in 1983, he has appeared regularly with most of the major American and European orchestras under a range of leading conductors.

His extensive list of recordings has won four Grammy nominations and eight Gramophone Awards—including two ‘Record of the Year’ awards, for concertos by Scharwenka and Sauer (CDA66790), and for the complete works for piano and orchestra by Saint-Saëns (CDA67331/2), the latter voted in 2008 by readers of The Times as the finest classical recording of the last thirty years. Recordings of Mendelssohn, Mompou, Schubert, Brahms, Liszt, Chopin and Hummel have further reinforced his status as an artist of the utmost distinction and individuality. His live recordings of the complete Rachmaninov piano concertos with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and Andrew Litton (CDA67501/2) have been widely acclaimed as one of the finest cycles of these popular works ever captured on disc.

Stephen is also an avid writer of music and prose. He wrote a blog for The Telegraph website for five years with over six hundred articles, and his first novel The Final Retreat was published in 2018 by Sylph Editions. His book Rough Ideas was published in the UK in 2019 by Faber, and in the USA in 2020 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, and his latest book, a memoir Enough: Scenes from Childhood, was published by Faber in February 2023. As a composer he is published by Josef Weinberger Ltd and has been commissioned by Wigmore Hall, the Genesis Foundation, the Gilmore Foundation, the Musée du Louvre, the Takács Quartet, the Van Cliburn Foundation and members of the Berlin Philharmonic among others. He is on the faculty of The Juilliard School in New York, and is the International Chair of Piano at the Royal Northern College of Music.