First single Granados: Danzas españolas, Op 37 – No 5: Andaluza (Playera) out today https://hyperion.lnk.to/CDA68469
Hyperion Records presents Stephen Hough’s Piano Postcards, a new solo piano album released on Friday 3 July 2026.
Filtered through the lens of an itinerant musician, Sir Stephen Hough has compiled an album of beloved musical ‘postcards’ – the ‘exotic’ variety sent home from his voyages, as well as the treasured heirloom sent to friends afar.
In this collection of exquisite miniatures, Sir Stephen picks popular songs and tunes from four continents then wittily re-imagines them for the piano. These deft new arrangements form a homage to places he has come to love over a lifetime of travelling and performing, musical morsels sent home for aural delectation.
Music from Asia includes a delicate piano version of Aka tombo, a children’s song so beloved in Japan that it even features in citywide ‘5-o’clock chimes’ across the country. Taiwanese composer Deng Yu-Hsien’s Spring breeze prelude is widely loved by the Hokkien-speaking community across South and Southeast Asia. Folk and popular traditions appear in Cielito lindo and Nature boy. The final group of works are the latest additions to Sir Stephen’s treasure trove of encores by Schumann, Rachmaninov, Sibelius, Sinding, Granados, Edward MacDowell, Abram Chasins, Malcolm Williamson – many of which he has performed on concert stages around the world.
Alongside these musical travel diaries, Sir Stephen intersperses sparkling new transcriptions of songs from popular Disney films Frozen, Coco, Mulan and Mary Poppins, some of which were created for and included in Lang Lang’s Disney Book album. While ‘Supercalifragilistic’ from Mary Poppins Suite already featured to huge success as Sir Stephen’s encore at the 2024 Last Night of the Proms, these performances of ‘Reflection’ and ‘Remember me’ will be world premiere recordings.
Piano Postcards is a homage to the tradition of the pianist-composer: musicians who performed, arranged and curated their own repertoire with freedom and individuality. Summing up the spirit of the album, Sir Stephen writes:
“Postcards’ suggest many things for me: travel, of course, greetings sent across the seas, ‘wish you were here’; but also writing to someone from home, a few words often meaning more than they say.”
“The musical amuse-bouche can contain profound poetry, or wit and whimsy, whether subtle or raucous … all on one oblong card.”
Tracklisting
Mary Poppins Suite [9:10]
Richard Sherman (1928–2024) & Robert Sherman (1925–2012), arr. Stephen Hough (b1961)
- Chim chim cher-ee [2:17]
- Feed the birds [3:14]
- Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious [3:39]
4. Prelude in E flat minor, Op 12 No 2
Abram Chasins (1903–1987) [1:35]
5. Prelude in G sharp minor, Op 32 No 12
Sergei Rachmaninov (1873–1943) [2:39]
6. Liebesleid
Fritz Kreisler (1875–1962), arr. Sergei Rachmaninov [4:55]
7. The flight of the bumblebee
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1908), arr. Sergei Rachmaninov [1:10]
8. Spring breeze prelude
Deng Yu-Hsien (1906–1944), arr. Stephen Hough [2:33]
9. Aka tombo
Kōsaku Yamada (1886–1965), arr. Stephen Hough [2:07]
10. Do you want to build a snowman? from Frozen
Robert Lopez (b1975) & Kristen Anderson-Lopez (b1972), arr. Stephen Hough [2:25]
11. Reflection from Mulan
Matthew Wilder (b1953) & David Zippel (b1954), arr. Stephen Hough [2:50]
12. Remember me from Coco
Robert Lopez & Kristen Anderson-Lopez, arr. Stephen Hough [2:47]
13. Cielito lindo
Quirino Mendoza y Cortés (1862–1957), arr. Stephen Hough [2:50]
14. Andaluza (Playera)
No 5 of Danzas españolas, Op 37
Enrique Granados (1867–1916) [4:02]
15. Minuet in G minor, HWV 434/4
George Frideric Handel (1685–1759), arr. Wilhelm Kempff (1895–1991) [3:13]
16. Toccata, Op 39
Cécile Chaminade (1857–1944) [3:30]
17. Thème varié in A major, Op 89
Cécile Chaminade [4:19]
18. Les sylvains, Op 60
Cécile Chaminade [4:10]
19. Passepied
No 6 of Scène du bal dans Le roi s’amuse
Léo Delibes (1836–1891) [1:39]
20. Flower-sellers (Place de la Madeleine)
No 2 of Travel Diaries – Paris
Malcolm Williamson (1931–2003) [1:51]
21. Broadway (Midnight)
No 5 of Travel Diaries – New York
Malcolm Williamson [1:58]
22. Étude in A minor
No 2 of 13 Pieces, Op 76
Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) [1:33]
23. Nature boy
Eden Ahbez (1908–1995), arr. Stephen Hough [4:13]
24. To a wild rose
No 1 of Woodland Sketches, Op 51
Edward MacDowell (1860–1908) [2:02]
25. Vogel als Prophet
No 7 of Waldszenen, Op 82
Robert Schumann (1810–1856) [2:42]
26. Rustle of Spring
No 3 of Six Pieces, Op 32
Christian Sinding (1856–1941) [2:55]
ABOUT SIR STEPHEN HOUGH
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 opened 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 had composed a brand-new second movement. Over the following 12 months, he gave more than 60 concerts/recitals across three continents, appearing with leading orchestras in the US, Europe, and Asia. This season also marked 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 featured 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, received 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 No.1 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.