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NEW YORK, NY (June 1, 2026) — Hyperion Records releases Sir Stephen Hough’s solo piano album, Stephen Hough's Piano Postcards, on July 3 in both physical and digital formats. Inspired by places, traditions, and melodies encountered throughout a lifetime of touring, the album combines Hough's own arrangements with a selection of favorite piano works.
“‘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.” Sir Stephen remarks.
On the road for most of the year, Hough travels internationally performing concertos, sonatas, chamber music, and his own compositions. Along the way he has built a deep familiarity with the piano repertoire and its many traditions. With Piano Postcards, Hough revisits forgotten songs, old favorites, and arrangements of his own, continuing in the tradition of pianist-composers who transformed popular music and folk melodies for the concert stage. The album also reflects the influence of two recordings Hough discovered as a child: Clive Lythgoe Plays, by the British pianist of the 1950s and ’60s, and the 1966 RCA Victrola compilation Keyboard Giants of the Past, featuring luminaries of the piano repertoire such as Rachmaninoff, Gabrilowitsch, Cortot, and Paderewski.
Featuring 26 tracks, ten of which are arrangements by Sir Stephen Hough, the album opens with Hough’s transcription of Richard and Robert Sherman’s The Mary Poppins Suite, originally commissioned for the pianist Lang Lang and his 2022 album The Disney Book. Featuring “Chim chim cher-ee,” “Feed the Birds,” and “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” the suite showcases familiar material with both affection and invention. In the final movement, references to Beethoven, Weber, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Stravinsky appear and disappear amid the Disney melodies. The "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" movement has already become a favorite encore for Hough, including at the 2024 Last Night of the Proms.
Throughout the album, Hough revisits the tradition of the pianist-composer through a series of transcriptions and arrangements. Alongside The Mary Poppins Suite are his versions of songs from Disney's Frozen, Mulan, and Coco, including the world premiere recordings of "Reflection" and "Remember Me," placing contemporary film music within a long tradition of piano transcription.
At the heart of Piano Postcards is Hough's personal treasury of encores: short works he has collected, performed, and carried with him across decades of concertizing. Drawn from a wide range of traditions, the collection includes music by Sergei Rachmaninov, Abram Chasins, Jean Sibelius, Robert Schumann, Christian Sinding, Edward MacDowell, and Enrique Granados, alongside Handel's Minuet in G minor in Wilhelm Kempff's arrangement, Fritz Kreisler's Liebesleid, and Rimsky-Korsakov's Flight of the Bumblebee from The Tale of Tsar Saltan. Three works by Cécile Chaminade including Toccata, Thème varié, and Les sylvains, further reflect Hough's affinity for the salon pieces, character works, and virtuoso miniatures that have long been part of pianists' recital and encore repertoire.
The album's title finds its fullest expression in works that evoke specific places and musical traditions. Music from Asia includes Kōsaku Yamada's Aka Tombo, a song so familiar in Japan that its melody is heard in municipal chimes across the country, and Deng Yu-Hsien's Spring Breeze Prelude, beloved throughout Hokkien-speaking communities in Taiwan and across South and Southeast Asia. Folk and popular traditions appear in the Mexican song Cielito lindo and Eden Ahbez's Nature Boy. Two musical snapshots from Malcolm Williamson's Travel Diaries continue the album's theme of travel, memory, and place including Paris: II. Flower-Sellers (Place de la Madeleine) and New York: V. Broadway (Midnight). Léo Delibes's Passepied from Le roi s'amuse adds another glimpse into the album's collection of musical souvenirs gathered from different eras and traditions.
A series of six digital singles introduce the album in advance of its release, offering an early glimpse into the album’s stylistic range. These include Granados's Andaluza (Playera), Hough's arrangements of "Remember Me" from Coco and "Reflection" from Mulan, Williamson's Broadway (Midnight) from Travel Diaries–New York, Chaminade's Les sylvains, and Handel's Minuet in G minor in Kempff's arrangement.
As a collection, Stephen Hough's Piano Postcards reflects a lifetime spent traveling, performing, and discovering music. Bringing together transcriptions, folk songs, encore pieces, and works drawn from a wide range of traditions, the album offers a portrait of the music Hough has carried with him, and now sends home as a series of musical postcards.
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