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, 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 worldwide. including Carnegie Hall, London’s Royal Festival Hall, Salzburg, Verbier, La Roque‑d’Anthéron, Aspen, Tanglewood, Aldeburgh and Edinburgh.

Sir Stephen Hough opens his 2025/26 season at the Elbphilharmonie, launching the Hamburg Staatsorchester’s season under its new music director Omer Meir Wellber with Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 3, for which he has composed a brand-new second movement. Over the following 12 months, he gives more than 60 concerts/recitals across three continents, appearing with leading orchestras in the US, Europe, and Asia. This season also marks the Asian premiere of his piano concerto The World of Yesterday – named after Stefan Zweig’s memoir – with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, followed by its Korean premiere with Symphony S.O.N.G. His season also features a series of high-profile recital appearances, including Wigmore Hall in London and Klavierfestival Ruhr in Germany. His Piano Quintet (Les Noces Rouges), inspired by an episode in American novelist Willa Cather’s My Ántonia, and commissioned by the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society in 2024, will receive its European and UK premieres at the National Concert Hall in Dublin and Southbank Centre in London.

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. 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. Recent releases include an album of Hough’s own Piano Concerto in March 2025 with the Hallé Orchestra and Sir Mark Elder.

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 No1 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 Spectator. 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.

Image © Jiyang Chen