Sir Anthony Hopkins announces classical album with Gustavo Dudamel
10 July 2026, 11:29 | Updated: 10 July 2026, 17:48
Two-time Oscar winner, Sir Anthony Hopkins, is releasing his second ever album of classical music, at the age of 88.
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Welsh actor Sir Anthony Hopkins is releasing his second album of classical music, Life is a Dream, this summer. Performed by the Philharmonia Orchestra and star conductor Gustavo Dudamel, the album contains more than six decades of Hopkins’ work and is said to be the actor’s ‘most personal musical project to date’.
Best known for his prolific career as an actor, including his role as the Bach-loving Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, Hopkins says his first love was something more aligned to the concert hall than the stage: “Music was my first desire, my first wish,” he told Decca Records, the label to which he has signed as an exclusive artist.
“I’ve been composing all my life. Some of these pieces have lived with me for decades and I still find myself returning to them.”
Hopkins began playing piano at age four, in his hometown of Port Talbot, Wales, performing the music of classical composers from Beethoven to Chopin. After a couple of years, he was improvising his own themes, and by his teenage years in the 1950s Hopkins was composing music for local plays.
Read more: Sir Anthony Hopkins, 85, stuns hotel staff with spontaneous piano playing in empty lobby
Sir Anthony Hopkins plays his own music, on a hotel lobby piano
Music has remained a key part of Hopkins’ life throughout his glittering career as an actor.
“Music often helps me find a way into roles,” he told Gramophone magazine in an interview on his musical heroes. “I listened to Copland all the time when preparing to play Richard Nixon on film... I know that I bring a psychological complexity to roles and although I am very cheerful in life, there is a melancholy side to me that I’ve carried from my youth in Wales. I love the sounds of Vaughan Williams and Elgar; I love their melancholy as well as their pastoral qualities.”
In 1994, his directorial debut August also featured Hopkins’ very own score, following encouragement from one of the film’s producers.
Then, in 2012, André Rieu and his Johann Strauss Orchestra brought a magical moment to life, performing ‘And the Waltz Goes On’, written by Hopkins in his 20s, for the very first time with the esteemed actor looking teary-eyed in the audience.
That same year, Hopkins released his debut classical album titled Composer, performed by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and conductor Michael Seal, and released on Decca Records in partnership with Classic FM.
In 2020, Hopkins kept global audiences entertained throughout lockdowns with his live video series, ‘Anthony Hopkins Live at the Piano’. Broadcast on social media, the actor played his own music and answered audience questions from the keyboard, frequently joined by his beloved cat, to viewers’ delight.
Another viral musical moment followed in 2023, when the actor was filmed serenading staff on a grand piano in an empty hotel lobby.
Read more: Anthony Hopkins playing piano for his cat while in quarantine is what the world needed
Anthony Hopkins serenades his beloved cat during self-isolation
Life is a Dream brings together inspirations from Hopkins’ family, home country, and his lifetime of experience. The first single, ‘Bracken Road’, is part of a suite for solo piano and orchestra, and harkens back to Hopkins’ childhood in Margam, South Wales.
He originally wrote the melody in 1963, as a young actor at the Liverpool Playhouse noodling on the theatre’s piano before the rest of the cast and crew arrived for rehearsals.
Elsewhere on the album is a dedication to Wales and his father: My Fatherland, which the composer wrote to “honour my humble beginnings. I am the son of my father, the baker.”
Hopkins said: “My whole life is a dream. Signing with Decca is the honour of a lifetime. It has been a true privilege to collaborate with the distinguished Philharmonia Orchestra and the virtuoso soloists, cellist Gregorio Nieto and classical pianist Sergio Tiempo.
“My deepest gratitude and respect go to Maestro Gustavo Dudamel, whose artistry is an integral part of this musical journey.”
Gustavo Dudamel added: “Sir Anthony Hopkins is one of those rare artists whose creative voice transcends any single medium. The same depth of imagination, humanity, and emotional truth that has defined his extraordinary work on stage and screen is present in his music.
“Anthony approaches music with the heart of a storyteller and the instincts of a poet, creating soundworlds that are both deeply personal and universally resonant.”
