Stephen Hough

Born on November 22, 1961, in Heswall, Wirral, England, Sir Stephen Hough is a classical pianist and composer. He began studying piano at the age of five but at the age of 12, he suffered a nervous breakdown after a mugging incident and spent close to a year out of school. He then attended Chetham’s School of Music and the Northern College of Music in Manchester, England, where he continued his piano studies in earnest. He was a finalist in the BBC Young Musicians Competition in 1978 and won the top prize in the pianist division. He then went on to win the Terence Judd Award in 1982 and took first prize at the Naumburg International Piano Competition in New York in 1983. Stephen Hough earned his master’s degree from the Julliard School in New York. Known for being a soloist, he is also a composer and transcriber who often performs his own compositions in his recitals. With over 30 published works, he has written pieces for piano as well as composing a cello concerto and masses for Westminster Abbey and Westminster Cathedral. Stephen Hough has received many honors during his career including being made an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music, a Fellow of the Royal Northern College of Music, and an Honorary Fellow of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He was the first classical music artist to receive a MacArthur Fellowship in 2001. He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2014 and honored with a Knight Bachelor for services to music in 2022. His recorded catalog features over 60 releases including Piano: Prokofiev, Scriabin, Liapunov (1985), My Favorite Things: Virtuoso Encores (1988), The Piano Album (1988), Piano Music (1996), Stephen Hough's English Piano Album (2002), The Stephen Hough Piano Collection (2005), Stephen Hough's Spanish Album (2006), Stephen Hough's French Album (2012), Stephen Hough's Dream Album (2018), Elgar: Violin Concerto / Violin Sonata (2021), and Mompou: Música Callada (2023). Some of his most celebrated albums include Saint-Saëns: The Complete Works for Piano and Orchestra (winner of Gramophone Magazine’s Records of the Year Award 2001), and Chopin: The Complete Waltzes (winner of a Diapason d'or in 2011). Since moving to Australia in 2005, Stephen Hough has held dual citizenship in both his adopted country and England.