- ‘The World of Yesterday’, named after Stefan Zweig’s titular memoir, nods to the touring pianist-virtuosi of yesteryear such as Franz Liszt and Sergei Rachmaninov
- Sir Stephen Hough presents premiere with The Hallé and Sir Mark Elder, alongside two solo piano works
Hyperion Records announces Sir Stephen Hough’s Piano Concerto for release on CD and across all streaming platforms on Friday 28 February. A vinyl LP follows on 28 March.
Named by ‘The Economist’ as one of twenty living polymaths, Sir Stephen is widely considered the foremost British pianist of his generation. The pianist has toured the world for over 40 years and, as a composer, has written a string quartet, various chamber works, five song cycles, choral music and solo piano music. Alongside four Piano Sonatas sit a constellation of dazzling arrangements including some Disney classics commissioned by superstar Lang Lang. Sir Stephen wowed a TV audience of 10.6 million at the 2024 Last Night of the Proms with his own piano arrangement of the Mary Poppins song ‘Supercalifragilistic’.
However, this new album sees the pianist-composer turn to a fresh genre, the piano concerto. The work’s sub-title ‘The world of yesterday’ evokes the touring pianist-virtuosi of yesteryear like Franz Liszt and Rachmaninov in the 19th and 20th centuries, who tramped the world both as composers and as performers.
Sir Stephen Hough commented: “The title is borrowed from Stefan Zweig’s eponymous memoir with its celebration of Viennese culture before the First World War: the world as it used to be; nostalgia both literal and legendary. But this title became a tag for me writing this piece, representing the history of the piano concerto form itself and of the pianists who wrote these works. A world of yesterday indeed.”
Sir Stephen recorded the new work, accompanied by Manchester’s renowned Hallé orchestra, under the baton of Sir Mark Elder. Critics praised the work’s timeless appeal as ‘a remarkable achievement’ (The Times). “Above all it is entertaining” declared Bachtrack. “There was something special in seeing a well-known pianist playing his own work. I hope that Hough will continue to captivate audiences with it – and am I being greedy to hope for a Piano Concerto no. 2?”
The piano concerto has long been a calling card for renowned pianist-composers, showcasing virtuosic skills and personal musical voices. ‘The World of Yesterday’ piano concerto was created during the pandemic. Initially conceived as a score for a film about a pianist composing a concerto, the project evolved into a standalone work, rich with narrative and emotional depth, introducing motifs with juxtaposition of Korngoldian decadence and interwar Americana. Hough blends and varies these motifs from charm and nostalgia to dazzling virtuosity, from an initial, blazing cadenza to a fiery tarantella in the third movement.
Alongside the new Piano Concerto comes the first recording of Sir Stephen’s Sonatina Nostalgica for solo piano, a musical tribute commissioned by Hough’s alma mater, Chetham’s School of Music. Lasting under five minutes, the piece is a triptych of tender memories of the picturesque village of Lymm in Cheshire.A further solo piano work of 2017, Partita, explores a more virtuoso world, crafting a work of deliberate exuberance.
Executive producer for Hough’s record label Hyperion, Barry Holden, commented: “No label could be more apt than Hyperion for this new work. Quite apart from the long 35-year relationship that Stephen Hough and Hyperion have enjoyed, the label has also created and recorded over 80 albums of rare piano concerto works in its series ‘The Romantic Piano Concerto’, publishing scores and enabling fans worldwide to explore many of those very composers – the pianist-virtuosi of yesteryear – that Stephen’s work evokes.”
CONCERTO PERFORMANCES IN 2025
UK: 26 and 27 Feb – Bournemouth Symphony/Mark Wigglesworth
USA: 5, 6 and 7 April – Oregon Symphony/David Danzmayer
AUSTRALIA: 31 May – Adelaide Symphony/Mark Wigglesworth
ASIA: 7 November – Singapore Symphony/Rodolfo Barráez
Tracklist:
Piano Concerto ‘The World of Yesterday’(2023) [20:47]
I. Prelude
II. Waltz variations
III. Tarantella appassionata
Sonatina nostalgica(2019) [4:58]
I. The road from Danebank
II. The bench by the Dam
III. A gathering at the Cross
Partita (2019) [14:07]
I. Overture
II. Capriccio
III. Canciòn y Danza I
IV. Canciòn y Danza II
V. Toccata
ABOUT SIR STEPHEN HOUGH
Named by The Economist as one of twenty living polymaths, Sir Stephen Hough combines the 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 of 2022.
In a career spanning over forty 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 NHK Symphony Orchestras. He has been a regular guest of recital series and festivals including Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium, London’s Royal Festival Hall, Salzburg, Verbier, La Roque-d’Anthéron, Aspen, Tanglewood, Aldeburgh and Edinburgh. Hough’s 2024/25 concert season began with his thirtieth appearance at the BBC Proms, performing at the Last Night of the Proms to a live audience of 6,000 and a televised audience of 3.5 million.
Hough’s discography of seventy recordings has garnered awards such as 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 Brahms’s final piano works, Chopin’s complete nocturnes, waltzes, ballades and scherzos, and recitals of Schumann, Schubert, Franck, Debussy, Mompou and Liszt.
As a composer, Hough’s Fanfare Toccata was commissioned for the 2022 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition and performed by all thirty competitors. His 2021 String Quartet No 1 ‘Les Six rencontres’ was written for and recorded by the Takács Quartet for Hyperion. The premiere of Hough’s Willa Cather-inspired Piano Quintet, at Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall, followed the 2024 first performance of his Piano Concerto ‘The world of yesterday’, which he brings to the Adelaide, Bournemouth, Oregon, Singapore and Vermont Symphony Orchestras. Hough’s songs and choral and instrumental works have been commissioned by the Musée du Louvre, National Gallery (London), Westminster Abbey, Westminster Cathedral, 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 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’s 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 Evening Standard. 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.