Stephen Hough

Stephen Hough, City Of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Andris Nelsons – Dvořák & Schumann: Piano Concertos (2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · October 28, 2023 · Comments off

Stephen Hough, City Of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Andris Nelsons – Dvořák & Schumann: Piano Concertos (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:13:10 minutes | 1,26 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hyperion Records

Two more rich piano concertos from the unparalleled Stephen Hough and the CBSO (they’ve already won Gramophone’s Record of the Year award twice). The eminent Andris Nelsons conducts, making his Hyperion debut. Schumann and Dvořák each wrote just one piano concerto, the latter being performed here in its fearsomely challenging original version.

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Stephen Hough – Grieg: Lyric Pieces (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · October 27, 2023 · Comments off

Since the dawn of the gramophone era Grieg’s Lyric Pieces have attracted the greatest pianists to the microphone. Their individual brevity played a part in this, of course, but rather more so did their intellectual transparency. For this new recording Stephen Hough has chosen twenty-seven (of the sixty-six), a generous selection encompassing every nuace of emotion, every tone of pianistic mastery.

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Stephen Hough – Liszt: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 2 – Grieg: Piano Concerto (2011) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · October 22, 2023 · Comments off

In celebration of the 200th anniversary of Franz Liszt’s birth, virtuoso pianist Stephen Hough recorded the Piano Concerto No. 1 in E flat major and the Piano Concerto No. 2 in A major, as well as Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A minor, a Liszt-inspired work that rounds out the program appropriately. While these warhorses are overly familiar to most classical fans, the Liszt bicentennial has given some listeners a chance to hear his concertos with new ears and find fresh things to like in them. Hough is very nearly the ideal pianist to help with any reassessment, and his clear communication of the music certainly makes everything coherent and engrossing, no matter how many times these concertos have been played or heard. The fully engaged accompaniment of the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra also contributes to the performances’ high level of interest, and Andrew Litton’s alert direction is a good match for Hough’s brilliance, especially in the Liszt concertos. The Grieg concerto is a more labored composition and offers less of the fantasy, flash, and fun that Liszt provides, but Hough gives it refinement and polish, and Litton keeps the textures and tone light enough to prevent the music from descending into murkiness. Hyperion’s recording is transparent and well-balanced throughout, so all three concertos have splendid sound.

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Stephen Hough – Chopin: Nocturnes (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · September 17, 2023 · Comments off

‘Some of the finest operatic arias ever written’ is Stephen Hough’s brilliant characterization of the Nocturnes, one which holds the key to his intensely lyrical interpretations of these most perfect of bel canto masterworks.

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Stephen Hough – Stephen Hough’s Dream Album (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · September 16, 2023 · Comments off

Few pianists today could devise such a recital—their own transcriptions and variations on well-known classics included as a matter of course—and seldom can these graceful, delightful pieces have had such consummate musicianship lavished on them. Such stuff as dreams are made on …

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Stephen Hough – Debussy: Piano Music (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · September 16, 2023 · Comments off

Any new recording from Stephen Hough is a keenly awaited musical event. Here his customary scintillating technique and imaginative intelligence (The Guardian) are deployed in the service of an all-Debussy recital which sets the bar high at this, the start of the composers centenary year.

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Stephen Hough – Vida breve (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · September 15, 2023 · Comments off

Piano Sonatas by Chopin (No 2) and Hough (No 4) are the twin peaks of a typically stimulating recital which—as always from Stephen Hough—spans centuries and styles with assurance. How often do Liszt’s ‘Funérailles’ and Gounod’s ‘Ave Maria’ share the same programme?Life is nothing if not unpredictable.

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Stephen Hough, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Andrew Litton – Rachmaninov: Complete Works for Piano and Orchestra (2004) MCH SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

SACD / DSD By admin · September 14, 2023 · Comments off

The combination of Dallas and Litton offers a conductor who adores Sergei Rachmaninov (he has recorded all the symphonies) and understands the works from a pianist’s perspective, an orchestra with a glorious and old-fashioned string sound of the kind with which the composer would be familiar, a hall to record in which is one of the best in the world, and let’s not forget Stephen Hough who has already won two Gramophone ‘Record of the Year’ accolades for his concerto recordings. As the results here triumphantly show, all our hopes have been fulfilled, and more.

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Stephen Hough, Hannu Lintu, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra – Beethoven: The Piano Concertos (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · September 13, 2023 · Comments off

Hearing Stephen Hough over the course of one of music’s most exhilarating odysseys is not an opportunity to be missed, especially when that odyssey encompasses the ﬁve piano concertos of Beethoven. Recorded following a cycle of live performances in Helsinki, this magniﬁcent set is sure to be recognized as one of Hough’s most important recordings.

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Stephen Hough – Brahms: The Final Piano Pieces, Op. 116-119 (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · September 3, 2023 · Comments off

A collection of exquisite Brahmsian miniatures: brief meditations on last things before—in Stephen Hough’s own words—‘the light fades and the final cigar is extinguished’.

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Stephen Hough – Mompou: Música callada (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · August 29, 2023 · Comments off

The Penguin Guide to Compact Discs awarded a rosette to Stephen Hough’s earlier Gramophone Award-winning Hyperion recording of Mompou, and this successor is equally fine. Música callada comprises twenty-eight exquisite miniatures, brief in duration yet rich in allusion: music which makes its mark with subtlety, understatement and a unique economy of means.

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Michael Collins & Stephen Hough – Brahms: 3 Sonatas (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · July 4, 2023 · Comments off

Friends of long standing as well as regular partners in chamber music, Michael Collins and Stephen Hough bring their combined musical insights and expertise to bear on Johannes Brahms’s sonatas for clarinet and piano. Together with the composer’s trio for clarinet, cello and piano and clarinet quintet, the sonatas are among the most treasured works in the repertoire of the instrument – but it is partly down to good luck that we have them at all. When Brahms in 1891 heard the clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld, principal clarinet of the Meiningen Court Orchestra, he had already announced his retirement. He was enraptured by Mühlfeld’s playing and its vocal qualities, however, and made a ‘comeback’: during the following couple of years he composed all four of his clarinet works.

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Stephen Hough, Mark Wigglesworth, Mozarteumorchester Salzburg – Brahms: The Piano Concertos (2013) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · September 10, 2022 · Comments off

Stephen Hough, Mark Wigglesworth, Mozarteumorchester Salzburg - Brahms: The Piano Concertos (2013) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Stephen Hough, Mark Wigglesworth, Mozarteumorchester Salzburg – Brahms: The Piano Concertos (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:37:57 minutes | 1,59 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hyperion Records

This attractively priced double set is one of Stephen Hough’s most important recordings. ‘Britain’s greatest living pianist’ (The Mail on Sunday) is joined by the Mozarteumorchester Salzburg and international conductor Mark Wigglesworth in their Hyperion debut for Brahms’s Piano Concertos. These works are among the greatest in the genre, and shore up Brahms’s reputation as both a symphonist and a piano composer. Separated by twenty-two years and widely differing in their reception (the first was scorned and the second a huge success), they are monumental in scale, impassioned and truly romantic, forward-looking in form and requiring both great virtuosity and intimacy from the pianist. Stephen Hough has performed them in concert for many years to ecstatic acclaim: this new recording is surely one of his most desirable offerings.
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Stephen Hough – Schubert: Piano Sonatas D664, 769a & 894 (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · June 14, 2022 · Comments off

The late G major sonata followed such landmarks as the ‘Great’ C major symphony and Schubert’s last string quartet, and explores similarly expansive terrain; the A major is an earlier, genial work. These frame the brief D769a fragment, which adds to the uniqueness of Stephen Hough’s marvellous recital.

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