Sir Stephen Hough Sets 'Piano Postcards' with New Covers of MARY POPPINS, FROZEN & More
The album will be out on July 3 in both physical and digital formats from Hyperion Records.
Sir Stephen Hough will release his solo piano album, Stephen Hough's Piano Postcards, on July 3 in both physical and digital formats from Hyperion Records. The album combines Hough's own arrangements with a selection of favorite piano works, including selections from Mary Poppins, Frozen, and more. A series of six digital singles are now available below.
On the road for most of the year, Hough travels internationally performing concertos, sonatas, chamber music, and his own compositions. With Piano Postcards, Hough revisits forgotten songs, old favorites, and arrangements of his own.
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 final movement also includes references to Beethoven, Weber, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Stravinsky.
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." 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.
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. Also included are three works by Cécile Chaminade: Toccata, Thème varié, and Les sylvains.
Music from Asia includes Kōsaku Yamada's Aka Tombo and Deng Yu-Hsien's Spring Breeze Prelude. 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).
Tracklisting
Richard Sherman & Robert Sherman, arr. Stephen Hough
Mary Poppins Suite [9'10]
1) Chim chim cher-ee [2'17]
2) Feed the birds [3'14]
3) Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious [3'39]
Abram Chasins
4) Prelude No 14 (No 2 in E flat minor from Preludes Book 3, Op 12) [1'35]
Sergei Rachmaninov
5) Preludes Op 32, No 12 in G sharp minor: Allegro [2'39]
Fritz Kreisler, arr. Sergei Rachmaninov
6) Liebesleid (No 2 of 3 Alt-Wiener Tanzweisen) [4'55]
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, arr. Sergei Rachmaninov
7) The flight of the bumblebee (Transcription from Skazka o Tsare Saltane The Tale of Tsar Saltan) [1'10]
Deng Yu-Hsien , arr. Stephen Hough
8) Spring breeze prelude [2'33]
Kōsaku Yamada, arr. Stephen Hough
9) Aka tombo [2'07]
Robert Lopez & Kristen Anderson-Lopez, arr. Stephen Hough
10) Do you want to build a snowman? [2'25]
Matthew Wilder, arr. Stephen Hough
11) Reflection [2'50]
Robert Lopez & Kristen Anderson-Lopez, arr. Stephen Hough
12) Remember me [2'47]
Quirino Mendoza y Cortés, arr. Stephen Hough
13) Cielito lindo [2'50]
Enrique Granados
14) Andaluza (Playera) (No 5 of Danzas españolas, Op 37) [4'02]
George Frideric Handel, arr. Wilhelm Kempff
15) Minuet in G minor HWV434/4 [3'13]
Cécile Chaminade
16) Toccata Op 39 [3'30]
17) Thème varié in A major Op 89 [4'19]
18) Les sylvains Op 60 [4'10]
Léo Delibes
19) Passepied (No 6 of Scène du Bal dans Le roi s'amuse) [1'39]
Malcolm Williamson
20) Flower-sellers (Place de la Madeleine) (No 2 of Travel Diaries – Paris) [1'51]
21) Broadway (Midnight) (No 5 of Travel Diaries – New York) [1'58]
Jean Sibelius
22) Étude in A minor (No 2 of Thirteen Pieces, Op 76) [1'33]
Eden Ahbez, arr. Stephen Hough
23) Nature boy [4'13]
Edward MacDowell
24) To a wild rose (No 1 of Woodland sketches, Op 51) [2'02]
Robert Schumann
25) Vogel als Prophet (No 7 of Waldszenen, Op 82) [2'42]
Christian Sinding
26) Rustle of Spring (No 3 of Six Pieces, Op 32) [2'55]
About Sir Stephen Hough
Sir Stephen Hough is a pianist, composer and writer. He was the first classical performer to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the New Year Honors 2014, and was awarded a Knighthood for Services to Music in the Queen’s Birthday Honors 2022.
He has performed extensively in recital and with most of the world’s major orchestras, and his catalog of over 70 albums has garnered four Grammy nominations, eight Gramophone Awards and France’s Diapason d’Or de l’Année. As a composer, he has been commissioned by Westminster Abbey, Westminster Cathedral, Wigmore Hall, the Gilmore Foundation, the Genesis Foundation, members of the Berlin Philharmonic, amongst others.
He wrote the commissioned work for the 2022 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, performed by all 30 competitors, and his String Quartet No.1 Les Six Rencontres, commissioned for the Takács Quartet, was recorded for Hyperion Records. 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 for Faber, Rough Ideas: Reflections on Music and More – a 2020 Royal Philharmonic Society Award winner and one of Financial Times’ Book of the Year 2019 – as well as his first novel, The Final Retreat (Sylph Editions, 2018). Hough is an Honorary Bencher of the Middle Temple, an Honorary Member of the Royal Philharmonic Society, and was a Visiting Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University from 2019 to 2022.
Videos
