Steven Osborne

The Scottish pianist Steven Osborne has built a reputation as an engaging and perceptive musician, combining intensity of expression and directness of communication with an uncommon musical intelligence. The core of Osborne’s repertoire is focused on Beethoven, Schubert, Russian composers (Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Mussorgsky), and French music (Debussy, Ravel, Messiaen). Born in 1971, Osborne studied at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, and since 1998 he has recorded for Hyperion Records. Osborne was one of the first pianists to popularise the jazz-infused music of Ukrainian-born Soviet composer Nikolai Kapustin, when he recorded the first two piano sonatas in 1999. Another defining success of his early recordings is his virtuoso and deeply spiritual account of Messiaen’s Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus (rec. 2001), a piece he studied with the composer’s widow, Yvonne Loriod. Recordings of Liszt and Alkan were followed by outstanding albums of the Preludes by Debussy (rec. 2006) and Rachmaninoff (rec. 2008), both of which are richly atmospheric and ideally capture the specific worlds of each piece. These two composers became a mainstay of Osborne’s recorded output. His stylish and acutely characterized Ravel is typical of an essentially un-egocentric approach, as is his Beethoven, which includes one of the finest recordings of the late piano sonatas (rec. 2018). A mesmerizing album of works by Morton Feldman and George Crumb further highlights the concentrated intensity of Osborne’s musicmaking, while his long-term musical partnership with the cellist Alban Gerhardt has also led to numerous recordings.