Gramophone Awards Issue 2023
Editor's Choice

London Choral Sinfonia, Michael Waldron

Hough: Just as I am
Hough: Missa Mirabilis
Hough: Londinium Magnificat
Hough: Londinium Nunc dimittis
Hough: Ding Dong Merrily on High
Hough: December
Hough: Marian Hymns (3)
Hough: O soft self-wounding pelican
Hough: Sonatina
Hough: Danny Boy

"Named by The Economist as one of Twenty Living Polymaths, Sir Stephen Hough combines a worldwide career as a pianist with those of composer and writer. ""My father said that I had memorised seventy nursery rhymes by the age of two. This sounds suspiciously like parental exaggeration to me, but I do know that such singing was my first form of musical expression, especially as we had no classical music in my childhood home. Then, by the age of six, the piano took over... but song remained in the background."" ""My first twenty years were filled with composing. Then followed almost twenty years of blank paper, writing virtually nothing except concert transcriptions for me to use as encores. Until, in my early 40s, I returned to composition with a passion..."" This release celebrates Hough’s compositional output in works for choir and organ performed by the London Choral Sinfonia, with organist James Orford and conductor Michael Waldron."