Stephen Hough’s Piano Postcards (CD)

Sir Stephen Hough’s new solo piano album Stephen Hough’s Piano Postcards explores the world from the perspective of the itinerant pianist sending home musical messages from his voyages. Stephen picks beloved songs and tunes from around the world – from Japan, Taiwan, Mexico, Spain and beyond – then wittily re-imagines them for the piano. These deft new arrangements form a homage to the countries he has come to love over a lifetime of travelling and performing, musical morsels sent home to us his listeners for aural delectation.

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.” Music from Asia includes ‘Spring breeze prelude’ by the Taiwanese composer Deng Yu-Hsien, widely loved across Taiwan and China. Stephen has also created 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. Folk and popular traditions appear in ‘Cielito lindo’ and ‘Nature boy’, while the final group of pieces turns to nature, with works by MacDowell, Schumann and Sinding. Alongside these musical travel diaries, Stephen intersperses sparkling new transcriptions of songs from popular films, including arrangements Stephen has created for Lang Lang’s ‘Disney Book’ album.

This is the first chance Sir Stephen has had to include piano arrangements of songs from ‘Frozen’, ‘Coco’ and ‘Mary Poppins’. In fact, ‘Supercalifragilistic’ from his ‘Mary Poppins Suite’ already featured to huge success as an encore at the 2024 Last Night of the Proms. Perhaps above all, Piano Postcards reflects 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, Hough writes: “The musical amuse-bouche can contain profound poetry, or wit and whimsy, whether subtle or raucous … all on one oblong card.”