From the archives

hat was your first Stephen Hough recording? Mine was a Liszt recital for Virgin from 1987, where he’s pictured sitting backwards on the piano stool, outstretched arms covering the keyboard. And I can still and . Special playing, and a musical maturity beyond Hough’s 26 years. () is more than a glimpse of things to come – ‘An Italian Recital’ of Liszt followed four years later, in a reading that manages to be sensuous as well as sulphurous. The two ‘Piano Albums’ offer encores and album leaves from a previous age of great pianists – Paderewski, Friedman, Rosenthal and Godowsky, as well as Hough’s own arrangements of Rodgers and Quilter.