Sir Stephen Hough on His New Solo Album, "Piano Postcards"

Sir Stephen Hough on His New Solo Album, "Piano Postcards"

“In practice a perfectionist, in performance a realist,” an early teacher told him. But Stephen Hough’s philosophy is different: “In practice an engineer, in performance a pilot.” Stephen Hough’s Piano Postcards mirrors a classical star’s life on the road By Matthew Gurewitsch “We are who we’ve met,” Sir Stephen Hough writes in his epilogue to Enough: Scenes from Childhood (2023). Knighted in 2022, the mischievous Cheshire lad who steps out of i…

Classical Music: Stephen Hough's Piano Postcards

He opens with his own arrangement of three songs from Sherman's score for Mary Poppins, and the charm is immediate and disarming. Chim Chim Cher-ee is simply delightful — an earworm, yes, but 'bug' feels the wrong word for something arranged with such loving craft. Feed the Birds unfolds in a long, languorous line that carries the listener somewhere else entirely, its trills and decorations enchanting, every phrase touched with real charisma. Th…