‘I’ve long admired the unfailingly beautiful, carefully honed, paradoxically rich but lean textures and sonorities Stephen Hough cultivates … a style in which patient, sustained utterance came to seem immediate, fervent and idealistic  … Crystal-sharp sound and superb performances; transcendental technique in the service of music that at least sets itself transcendental goals’ (Pianist)

‘Hough plays [Leighton] superbly, with marvellous tonal control in the rugged and spiky passages and also in the quiet harmonic episodes that glow with fierce intensity … enjoyable, excellently performed and beautifully engineered CD’ (International Piano)

‘[Hough] plays with an astonishing command, great insight and some terrific finesse, in a performance that ranges from the elegant and sensitive to the vigorous and exhilarating’ (Hi-Fi News)

‘Exquisite presentation … [Hough] is a pianist of such refinement and impeccable technique that he makes everything he plays compellingly interesting … [the Leighton Studies] have a clear awareness of other 20th -century musical styles, including jazz, and there is an element of virtuosity that Hough, of course, delivers brilliantly’ (The Guardian)

‘These performances can be regarded as definitive … a CD of revealing personal choices of a master pianist, and one that reveals yet more very worthy British music … strongly recommended’ (Fanfare, USA)

‘Scrupulous, full … bodied, and technically impeccable performances … He revels in the sensuous harmonic felicities that color Stephen Reynolds' pastiches and makes an easy task of York Bowen’s fustian textures’ (Classics Today)

‘Hough’s pianism is a constant source of wonder – every chord and phrase perfectly judged’ (Classic FM Magazine)

‘Hough's performances are magical – scintillating, refined, sensuous in the smaller works, commanding and powerful in Rawsthorne and Leighton. I hope this superb pianist records many more recitals of British music’ (American Record Guide)

‘Powerful, sympathetic and beautifully recorded, and his fans everywhere will be thrilled’ (BBC Music Magazine)

‘Another winner from the ever-imaginative Stephen Hough. In all these pieces Hough's magic is presented in full, clear Hyperion sound’ (Gramophone)

‘An unhackneyed selection. Everything is beautifully played; whether the four pieces by Fauré or the three by Poulenc, it is a feast of virtousity and poetry’ (Dominion Post, New Zealand)

‘It is a stroke of genius to end with the Liszt/Halévy Réminiscences de La juive. Hough makes this Fantaisie brillante a true tour-de-force … a terrific disc’ (International Piano)