Our Cafe Bar and Box Office will be closed to the public from Friday 29 March to Monday 1 April (inclusive). We look forward to seeing you again soon.

Skip to main content

Sir Stephen Hough

This event has passed.
‘An exquisite gourmet experience’ (Gramophone)

Sir Stephen Hough: ‘Music is not just icing on the cake. It’s the cake itself. It’s human life

Named by The Economist as one of Twenty Living Polymaths, Stephen Hough combines a distinguished career as a pianist with those of composer and writer. He was the first classical performer to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship and was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the New Year’s Honours 2014.


A note from Stephen: My Partita was commissioned by the Naumburg Foundation for Albert Cano Smit. Having written four sonatas for piano of a serious, intense character I wanted to write something different – something brighter, something more celebratory, more nostalgic. Written in 2019 it is in five movements. The outer, more substantial bookends have an ‘English’ flavour and suggest the world of a grand cathedral organ. The first of these alternates between ceremonial pomp and sentimental circumstance, whereas the final movement, taking thematic material from the first, is a virtuosic toccata – a sortie out of the gothic gloom into brilliant Sunday sunshine. At the centre of the work are three shorter movements each utilising the interval of a fifth: a restless, jagged Capriccio of constantly shifting time signatures, and two Cançion y Danzas, inspired by the Catalan composer Federico Mompou.


Mompou Cants Magics
Scriabin  5th sonata
Debussy  Estampes
Hough Partita
Liszt 3 Petrarch Sonnets (from Italian Années de Pèlerinage)
Liszt Dante Sonata (from Italian Années de Pèlerinage)

Pre-event Food & Drink

Enjoy delicious drinks and light bites from our Café Bar ahead of the event.

Available to pre-order when booking your tickets, you can choose from a selection of house drinks on arrival, accompanied by a board of bread, olives and dips (all Vegetarian). Just select which option – for one or two people – you would like, before checkout.

Your pre-ordered food and drink will be available to collect from the Café Bar from 60 minutes before the event. It’s the perfect way to begin your event experience at St George’s!