Steven Osborne’s musical insight and integrity underpin idiomatic interpretations of varied repertoire that have won him fans around the world. The extent of his range is demonstrated by his 41 recordings for Hyperion, which have earned numerous awards, and he was made OBE for his services to music in the Queen’s New Year Honours in 2022.

A thoughtful and curious musician, he has served as Artist-in-Residence at Wigmore Hall and Bath International Music Festival, and is often invited to curate festivals, including at Antwerp’s DeSingel,and for Antwerp Symphony Orchestra. The Observer described him as ‘a player in absolute service to the composer’.

Osborne is a regular visitor to the BBC Proms, having performed there 15 times. In 2024 he gave two concerts in the same week, the first in Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie with the BBC Philharmonic under Nicholas Collon, with whom he performs it later in the season with Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. He then performed Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with the Sinfonia of London.

He has a lifelong interest in jazz and often improvises in concerts, bringing this spontaneity and freedom to all his interpretations, and performing his own transcriptions as encores. This season he tours the US with a recital programme that includes his own jazz transcriptions and improvisations. Other performances in the 2024–25 season include Ryan Wigglesworth’s Piano Concerto, with the composer conducting Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra, Britten with Deutsche Radio Philharmonie, Grieg with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and a recital at the Aspen Festival. He also tours the US in a duo with violinist Benjamin Beilman.

Osborne has performed in the world’s most prestigious venues, including the Wiener Konzerthaus, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Berlin Philharmonie, Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, Suntory Hall and Kennedy Center Washington, and is a regular guest at both Lincoln Center and Wigmore Hall.

He has worked with major orchestras around the globe, most recently Czech Philharmonic/Bychkov, Israel Philharmonic/Petrenko, Dresden Philharmonic/Runnicles, Seattle Symphony and Philharmonia/Rouvali, Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin, Oslo Philharmonic, London Symphony, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony and Seattle Symphony.

He has been a Hyperion recording artist since 1998, with releases spanning Beethoven, Schubert, Ravel, Liszt, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, Medtner, Messiaen, Britten, Tippett, Crumb and Feldman, and winning numerous awards around the world. His most recent addition, at the end of 2023, was Debussy’s Études and Pour le piano, given five stars by BBC Music Magazine and described as ‘full of superlatives’. In 2024 he returns to the studio with Paul Lewis to record twopiano
repertoire by Schubert, Schumann and Brahms.

Osborne was born in Scotland and studied at St Mary’s Music School in Edinburgh and the Royal Northern College of Music. He is Visiting Professor at the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Patron of both the Scottish International Piano Competition and the Lammermuir Festival, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2014.

Photo credit: Ben Ealovega