Ian Hobson

Swanlund Professor of Piano
on leave spring 2010

Diploma, Royal Academy of Music; B.A., Cambridge; M.M. (piano, organ, and harpsichord) and D.M.A. (piano and conducting), Yale School of Music

Ian Hobson is a musician of tremendous versatility with an international reputation as a pianist, conductor, and teacher. Born in England, his international career was launched in 1981 when he won first prize at the Leeds International Piano Competition. The breadth of Ian Hobson's repertoire demonstrates his extraordinary command of styles and scholarly vision as well as his keyboard prowess. Hobson's performances encompass a cross section of works from mammoth to miniature, including a series of works from The London Pianoforte School, the complete cycle of Beethoven Piano Sonatas, all of the Brahms Variations for Piano, the Bach "Goldberg" Variations, and the Chopin-Godowsky Etudes, as well as Rachmaninov's Early Works, Seventeen Etudes-Tableaux, Twenty-four Preludes, and Solo Piano Transcriptions, in addition to contemporary works written for Hobson by Ridout, Lees, Liptak, and Gardner. The catalogue of Hobson recordings features more than twenty titles on the Arabesque label, as well as recordings for Albany Records, EMI, and BMG/Catalyst.

Major orchestras of the world have welcomed Hobson in concert, including the Royal, London, and Royal Liverpool Philharmonics; the Scottish National, Hallé, and ORD-Vienna orchestras; Das Orchester der Beethovenhalle; and the symphony orchestras of Chicago, Philadelphia, Houston, Pittsburgh, Saint Louis, and Baltimore. In recent seasons, Hobson has performed on the Great Performers at Lincoln Center series, at Carnegie Hall with the American Composers Orchestra, and at New York's Mostly Mozart Festival as well as at the Bard Music Festival.

Increasingly in demand as a guest conductor, Hobson often doubles as piano soloist and has conducted piano concertos from the keyboard with the San Diego, Indianapolis, and English Chamber Orchestras, and the Kibbutz Chamber Orchestra of Israel. His conducting extends to opera, and for five seasons he conducted, performed, and taught at the Gubbio Festival in Italy.

In 1997 Hobson served on the jury for the Tenth Van Cliburn International Piano to the screening auditions of all 150 contestants. These five jurors were joined by another eight for the final rounds of the competition in Fort Worth, Texas, in May/June, 1997. The international panel of distinguished pianists included Menahem Pressler and Claude Frank (both former teachers of Ian Hobson's), Cécile Ousset, Alexis Weissenberg, Jerome Lowenthal, and Warren Jones, among others.

Named Swanland Professor of Music at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2001, Ian Hobson is a Professor in the Center for Advanced Study and is the recipient of a Distinguished Alumni Award from Yale University.