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Appointment

Thursday, 11 February

7:00 pm

Stephen Hough (pianist)

One of today’s most distinguished pianists, Stephen Hough, talks to Jim Svejda about his life in music. Hough is a British-born classical pianist, composer and writer. He became an Australian citizen in 2005 and thus has dual nationality (his father was born in Australia in 1926).

Hough was born in Heswall (then in Cheshire) on the Wirral Peninsula, and grew up in Hoylake, where he began piano lessons at the age of five. In 1978, he was a finalist in the BBC Young Musician of the Year Competition and won the piano section. In 1982, he won the Terence Judd Award in England. In 1983, he took first prize at the Naumburg International Piano Competition in New York.

Hough holds a Master's degree from the Juilliard School and was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship in 2001. He has studied with Heather Slade-Lipkin, Gordon Green, and Derrick Wyndham. He is also a notable composer and transcriber, and often includes his own works in his recitals.

The premiere of his cello concerto, written for Steven Isserlis, took place in March 2007, and in the summer of the same year the Westminster Abbey and Westminster Cathedral choirs performed masses he wrote for them.

His recording of the five Saint-Saëns concertos won the Gramophone Record of the Year in 2001, and was later voted the "winner of winners" in a poll commemorating 30 years of the award.

(Source: Wikipedia)

This programme was produced by KUSC