“We are who we’ve met,” Sir Stephen Hough writes in his epilogue to Enough: Scenes from Childhood (2023). Knighted in 2022, the mischievous Cheshire lad who steps out of its pages comes from a family on guard against anything that might smack of “posh” (which they pronounced powsh). Only the boy’s early obsession with the keyboard—initially discouraged by his parents—pointed to his destiny as a globe-trotting concert pianist, a composer in the major classical genres, and a fluent essayist and autobiographer to boot.
In its own way, his album Piano Postcards—26 solo tracks totaling 75 minutes of music—reflects the same curiosity and ecumenical spirit that cast their glow on his memoir. “Long written letters have sort of gone now,” says Hough. (That’s huff, not how.) “I’m comfortable with the electronic replacements. I don’t need a handwritten letter that I can’t read because I can’t read the handwriting. But a postcard? I think that could be revived.”
