Stephen Hough’s Piano Postcards (Hyperion, 2026). Liszt-alike pianist Stephen Hough has a long history with the whole genre of classy, fun-to-listen, short form piano pieces. Going all the way back to his 1988 collection My Favorite Things: Virtuoso Encores (released on Musicmasters in UK, re-issued 1991 by Musical Heritage Society in the US), he has been playing and recording what he (and others) sometimes refer to as “bon-bons“: character pieces, show tunes, whirlwind confections, and dazzling transcriptions.
I’m not kidding when I namecheck and compare Hough to Liszt. If his multiple albums of obscure finger-breaking Romantic era piano concertos and big solo piano core repertoire recitals (including Liszt, of course) weren’t enough to make the point, consider: he is also a capable and distinctive composer in his own right, with a talent for exactly the kind of entertaining and showy crowd pleasers that were half of Liszt’s stock in trade.
I’m sure he would never make any sort of claim to be the modern-day Liszt, but his body of work speaks for itself. At any rate, don’t be shy. Go ahead and enjoy this winning album of his bon-bons, it’s definitely a not-guilty pleasure. The whole album is due for full release on all the usual services July 3.
Charlotte Hu: Goyescas (Pentatone, 2026). This is a very fine recording of rather neglected piano masterworks by Enrique Granados. Music composed around 1910-1915, and ranking right up there with Albéniz’s Iberia as one of the supreme early-20th-century Spanish piano suites.
I’ll be reviewing this in full as soon as I can get to it. Meanwhile, I could hardly say it better than Charlotte Hu, explaining how she got to know Goyescas as a Juilliard student, in her good liner notes (available online with the better streaming services):
“[It is] not simply the technical brilliance of the writing, but rather the poetry embedded within – the nuanced characters, the narrative arc that unfolds across the entire suite, the distinctly Spanish flavors interwoven with profound emotional depth, and the virtuosity that never overshadows the music’s intimate storytelling. Here was a masterwork that seemed to contain entire worlds: passion, tenderness, humor, shadow, and light all coexisting within its six movements.“
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Here’s a bonus bon-bon to brighten your day. This track will be available on Stephen Hough’s Piano Postcards on release day. But it’s already available as a streaming single. What would Liszt have done if Mary Poppins had been an opera in the 1850’s?
