Steven Osborne

Steven Osborne (OBE) is one of Britain’s most treasured musicians, with an immense depth of musicality and refinement of expression across diverse repertoire, be it in Beethoven or Messiaen, Schubert or Ravel, Prokofiev or jazz improvisations. His many awards include the Royal Philharmonic Society Instrumentalist of the Year, two BBC Music Magazine Awards, and two Gramophone Awards. Osborne has been praised by the Observer as “always a player in absolute service to the composer.”

His residences at, among others, London’s Wigmore Hall, Antwerp’s deSingel, the Bath International Music Festival, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra speak to the respect he commands. Osborne’s 32 recordings on Hyperion have won multiple awards and his two 2021 releases of Prokofiev’s War Sonatas and French works for piano duet with Paul Lewis were both shortlisted for a Gramophone Award.

Osborne’s recitals have been publicly and critically acclaimed, with recent programs revisiting his recording repertoire of Beethoven and Rachmaninoff interspersed with his own improvisations and music by another of his much-admired composers, Schubert. He has performed at many of the world’s most prestigious venues, including Vienna’s Konzerthaus as well as the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Berlin Phillharmonie and Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, Suntory Hall in Tokyo, and the Kennedy Center in Washington (DC), and he is a regular guest at both Lincoln Center and London’s Wigmore Hall.

Concerto performances take Osborne to major orchestras all over the world, including recent visits to the Deutsches 
Symphonie Orchester Berlin, Radio Symphonieorchester Wien, Oslo Philharmonic, Danish National Radio, London Symphony, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Australian Chamber Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, Aspen Music Festival, and Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center with repertoire ranging from Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Ravel, Rachmaninoff, Shostakovich, and Messiaen through to Tippett, Britten, and Julian Anderson (who dedicated his 2017 Piano Concerto to Osborne). Recent seasons have seen returns to the London Philharmonic Orchestra to perform the Tippett Piano Concerto with Ed Gardner and performances with the Stuttgart Philharmonic, BBC Philharmonic, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Ulster Orchestra, Singapore Symphony, West Australian Symphony, Adelaide Symphony, and the São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra.

A Hyperion label artist since 1998, his recordings have received numerous awards in the UK, France, Germany, and the US, including two Gramophone Awards, three Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik Awards, and a Choc in Classica Magazine, in addition to a number of Editor’s Choice citations in Gramophone and Recordings of the Year designations from the Daily Telegraph, Guardian, The Times, and The Sunday Times. His recordings span a wide range of repertoire that includes Beethoven, Schubert, Debussy, Ravel, Liszt, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, Medtner, Messiaen, Britten, Tippett, Crumb, and Feldman.

Osborne won first prize at the prestigious Clara Haskil Competition in 1991 and the Naumburg International Competition in 1997. Born in Scotland, he studied with Richard Beauchamp at St. Mary’s Music School in Edinburgh and Renna Kellaway at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. He is Visiting Professor at the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Patron of the Lammermuir Festival, and in 2014 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Osborne was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to music in the 2022 Queen’s New Year Honors.