IAN HOBSON
ianist and conductor Ian Hobson is recognized internationally for his masterly performances of the Romantic repertoire, his deft and idiomatic readings of neglected piano music old and new, and his assured conducting from both the piano and the podium. In addition to being a lauded performer, Mr. Hobson is a dedicated scholar and educator who has pioneered renewed interest in the music of such lesser known masters as Ignaz Moscheles and Johann Hummel. He has also been an effective advocate of works written expressly for him by a number of today’s noted composers, including Benjamin Lees, John Gardner, David Liptak, Alan Ridout, and Roberto Sierra.
Hobson is an artist of prodigious energy and resource, having to date amassed a discography of some 60 releases, including the complete piano sonatas of Beethoven and Schumann and a complete edition of Brahms’s variations for piano. In the dual role of pianist and conductor, in 2007 Mr. Hobson recorded for the Zephyr label the four piano concertos and Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini by Rachmaninoff with the Sinfonia Varsovia -- a tour de force no other performer has matched. In addition, Mr. Hobson has recorded more than twenty albums for the Arabesque label featuring the music of Clementi, Dussek, Weber; the complete piano sonatas of Hummel, the complete solo piano transcriptions of Rachmaninoff, and Hobson’s Choice, a collection of the pianist’s favorite pieces exploring the multiple facets of virtuosity across the span of three centuries. Orchestral releases include works by Jean Françaix, Darius Milhaud, Camille Saint-Saëns, as well as Igor Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat and William Walton’s Façade, with narrator William Warfield and the Sinfonia da Camera led by Hobson.
Hobson can also be heard on the BMG/Catalyst label for which he recorded Kevin Oldham’s Concerto for Piano with the Kansas City Symphony, led by William McLaughlin. He also recorded Mozart’s Piano Concertos No. 23 & 24 with the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Sir Alexander Gibson for EMI, and Henry Holden Huss’s Piano Concerto with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra for Hyperion. In 2007 ARTEC released the Brahms and Mendelssohn violin concertos with violinist Andrés Cárdenes and Hobson conducting the Sinfonia Varsovia.
Most recently, Mr. Hobson has been engaged in recording the complete works of Chopin for Zephyr, in Warsaw. This is a projected 16-CD edition which will be released in 2009 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the composer’s birth the following year. In addition to Chopin’s large body of work for solo piano, this series will feature performances by pianist and conductor Hobson and the Sinfonia Varsovia in all of Chopin’s works for piano and orchestra, plus Mr. Hobson’s collaboration as pianist with other artists in Chopin’s chamber music and songs. With this edition Mr. Hobson will be the first ever to record Chopin’s entire oeuvre as a single artist.
Mr. Hobson’s 2008 engagements included performances with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Charles Dutoit, an appearance with the Moscow Chopin Orchestra and a Wigmore Hall recital of works by Haydn, Schumann, Chopin, Ravel, and the eccentric early 19th century English genius, Samuel Wesley. For 2007 Mr. Hobson gave the world premiere of Benjamin Lees’s Third Piano Concerto (written for Hobson) with the Florida Orchestra, a work scheduled for CD release by Albany Records in 2009, along with the piano solo piece, 12 Mirrors – an expanded version of Mirrors premiered by Hobson in 1992. The pianist’s recent collaborations with Roberto Sierra have also resulted in several premieres: Reflections on a Souvenir (inspired by Gottschalk's Souvenir de Porto Rico) at Wigmore Hall in 2006; the piano concerto, Variations on a Souvenir with the Puerto Rico Symphony led by Theo Alcantara in 2007; and Toccata in 2008. In 2009 Albany will release an album highlighting Hobson as a conductor in Sierra’s Fandangos, and as a soloist in Reflections on a Souvenir and Variations on a Souvenir with Sinfonia da Camera led by Eduardo Diazmuñoz.
Mr. Hobson performs regularly as guest soloist with the world’s major orchestras; in the United States these include the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra and the symphony orchestras of Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Baltimore, Indianapolis, and Houston, and the American Composers Orchestra. Abroad he has been heard with the Royal Phiharmonic, London Philharmonic, Scottish National Orchestra, Royal Liverpool, and Halle orchestras, ORD-Vienna, das Orchester der Beethovenhalle, Israeli Sinfonietta, and the New Zealand Symphony.
Increasingly, Hobson is in demand as a conductor, particularly for performances in which he doubles as a pianist. He made his debut with the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra as both conductor and soloist in 1996. To date, Maestro Hobson has been invited to lead the English Chamber Orchestra, the Sinfonia Varsovia (Carnegie Hall), the Pomeranian Philharmonic (Poland), the Fort Worth Chamber Orchestra (Bass Hall), and the Kibbutz Chamber Orchestra of Israel, among others. As a pianist and conductor, Hobson performs extensively with Sinfonia da Camera, the chamber ensemble he formed in 1984 and which quickly gained international recognition through its recordings. The ensemble celebrated its 25th anniversary season at the University of Illinois (Champaign-Urbana) in May 2009 with a world premiere performance of Moscheles’s Piano Concerto No.8, orchestrated by Hobson from notes scrawled by the composer on an original piano score. This recorded performance marks the final installment in Mr. Hobson’s four-volume set of Moscheles’s Piano Concertos and Other Works scheduled for release by Zephyr Records.
Mr. Hobson is also active as an opera conductor, with a repertoire that encompasses works by Cimarosa and Pergolesi, Mozart and Beethoven, and Johann and Richard Strauss. In 1997 he conducted John Philip Sousa’s comic opera, El Capitan, in a newly restored version with Sinfonia da Camera and a stellar cast of young singers. The recording was issued in 1998 as one of the inaugural releases for the Zephyr label founded by Mr. Hobson. A fervent advocate of George Enescu’s work, Hobson conducted and recorded the 2005 North American premiere of the operatic masterpiece, Oedipe, in a semi-staged version performed by Sinfonia da Camera on the 50th anniversary of the composer’s death. The CD was released by Albany Records in 2006.
In addition, Mr. Hobson is a much sought-after judge for national and international competitions and has been invited to join numerous juries, among them the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition (at the specific request of Mr. Cliburn), the Arthur Rubinstein Competition in Poland, the Chopin Competition in Florida, the Leeds Piano Competition in the U.K., and the Schumann International Competition in Germany. In 2005 Hobson served as Chairman of the Jury for the Cleveland International Competition and the Kosciuzsko Competition in New York; in 2008 he was Chairman of Jury of the New York Piano Competition; and in 2010 he will again serve in that capacity of the newly renamed New York International Piano Competition.
One of the youngest ever graduates of the Royal Academy of Music, Mr. Hobson began his international career in 1981 when he won First Prize at the Leeds International Piano Competition, after having earned silver medals at both the Arthur Rubinstein and Vienna-Beethoven competitions. Born in Wolverhampton, England, he studied at Cambridge University (England), and at Yale University, in addition to his earlier studies at the Royal Academy of Music. A professor in the Center for Advanced Study at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), Hobson received the endowed chair of Swanlund Professor of Music in 2000. Among his distinguished teachers were Sidney Harrison, Ward Davenny, Claude Frank, and Menahem Pressler. As a conductor Hobson studied with Otto Werner Mueller, Denis Russell Davies, Daniel Lewis, and Gustav Meier, and worked with Lorin Maazel in Cleveland and Leonard Bernstein at Tanglewood.
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