Ian Hobson Interview with Bruce Duffie . . . . . . . . .

Pianist / Conductor Ian Hobson

A Conversation with Bruce Duffie

A native of Wolverhampton, England, Ian Hobson (born August 7, 1952) is recognized throughout the world for his masterful performances of the Romantic repertoire, his deft and idiomatic readings of neglected piano scores old and new, and his assured conducting from both the piano and the podium. Mr. Hobson is also renowned as a dedicated scholar and educator, who has pioneered renewed interest in the music of lesser-known masters Johann Hummel and Ignaz Moscheles. He is also an effective advocate of works written expressly for him by several of today’s noted composers, including John Gardner, Benjamin Lees, David Liptak, Alan Ridout, Roberto Sierra, and Yehudi Wyner.

hobson As guest soloist, Mr. Hobson appears regularly with the world’s major orchestras in the United States including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and The Philadelphia Orchestra. Abroad, he has been heard with Great Britain’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, The London Philharmonic Orchestra, Scottish National Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Hallé Orchestra, ORD-Vienna, Orchester der Beethovenhalle, Moscow Chopin Orchestra, Israeli Sinfonietta and New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.

Active in the recording studio, Mr. Hobson has been engaged in recording a 16-volume collection of the complete works of Chopin for the Zephyr label. This edition includes approximately 45 minutes of Chopin music never before recorded, making Mr. Hobson the first ever to record the composer’s entire oeuvre as a single artist. Organized in chronological order, the pieces in the collection were recorded between 2003 and 2009, mainly in Poland. Of the 16 volumes, 12 are solo piano. [One CD of the set is shown at left.]

Hobson presented a 10-recital series devoted to the 200th anniversary of the Romantic Era’s two greatest composers for the piano: Chopin and Schumann, at New York City’s Dicapo Opera Theatre. In the 2011-12 season Ian Hobson presented the complete solo piano works of Robert Schumann in Urbana, Illinois.

Increasingly, Mr. Hobson is in demand as a conductor, particularly for performances in which he doubles as a pianist. He made his debut in this capacity in 1996 with the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, and has subsequently appeared with the English Chamber Orchestra, Poland’s Sinfonia Varsovia (at Carnegie Hall) and Pomeranian Philharmonic and Kibbutz Chamber Orchestra of Israel, among others.

Ian 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. A fervent advocate of George Enescu’s music, he conducted and recorded the 2005 North American première of the operatic masterpiece, Oedipe, in a semi-staged version performed by Sinfonia da Camera on the 50th anniversary of the composer’s death.

An artist of prodigious energy and resource, Mr. Hobson has amassed a discography of over 60 releases [a few of which are shown as illustrations on this webpage]. In the dual role of pianist/conductor, he and the Sinfonia Varsovia recorded for Zephyr Rachmaninoff’s four piano concerti and Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini – a tour de force no other performer has matched.

In addition, Ian Hobson is a much sought-after judge for national and international competitions, and has been a member of numerous juries, among them the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition (at the specific request of Mr. Cliburn), the Chopin Competition in Florida, Leeds International Pianoforte Competition (U.K.), Schumann International Competition (Germany) and Arthur Rubinstein Competition (Poland). In 2005, he served as Chairman of the Jury for the Cleveland International Piano Competition and New York City’s Kosciuzsko Competition; in 2008, he served in the same capacity for the New York Piano Competition – to which, renamed New York International Piano Competition, he returned in 2010.

One of the youngest graduates in the history of London’s Royal Academy of Music, Ian Hobson subsequently pursued advanced studies at both Cambridge University and Yale University. He 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. Among his distinguished teachers were Sidney Harrison, Ward Davenny, Claude Frank and Menahem Pressler, while, as a conductor, he studied with Otto Werner Mueller, Dennis Russell Davies, Daniel Lewis and Gustav Meier, and worked with Lorin Maazel in Cleveland and Leonard Bernstein at Tanglewood. Mr. Hobson is Emeritus Center for Advanced Study and Swanlund Professor of Music at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and a Visiting Fellow at Magdalene College, Cambridge.

He received his diploma from the Royal Academy of Music, a BA from Cambridge, an MM. (piano, organ, and harpsichord), and a DMA (piano and conducting), Yale School of Music.

== Biography from the website of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign [with slight additions]
== Names which are links in this box and below refer to my interviews elsewhere on my website. BD

In May of 1991, Ian Hobson was in Chicago, and graciously agreed to sit down with me for a conversation. We spoke of several musical topics, and portions were used on WNIB, Classical 97, along with some of his many recordings. Similar programs were later presented on Contemporary Classical Internet Radio. Now [2024], I am pleased to present the entire interview.

While we were setting up to record, I asked him if he had done any composing . . . . .

Ian Hobson:   Yes, I have. I did composing as part of my BA degree at Cambridge, and since then, I’ve written one set of incidental music for Midsummer Night’s Dream, which has been done. It was about 10 minutes of music for a play production.

Bruce Duffie:   Mostly, you are a conductor, and pianist, and teacher. How do you divide your time among those three very taxing activities?

Hobson:   Most of my teaching takes place at the University of Illinois where I’ve been for 15 years now. I find it very stimulating to come into the teaching studio. Usually, I would say 99% of the time I come away from a lesson having learned something, and having enjoyed struggling with some problem with a student either musical, or technical, or both.

BD:   Is it as much your success as the student’s success when it’s conquered?

Hobson: I think it was Leschetizky (shown below) who said there are no great teachers, only great students. One could see what he means, although rarely in a university situation is one dealing with great students. There are many, many times where you have some very talented ones, and on occasion some really superb ones. But very often, students will learn piano as an extra activity. They may not even be music majors. They probably will be intelligent people who are doing other things, and want to learn the discipline of playing the piano. That’s all to the good.

BD: Do you find that non-music majors tend to be mostly scientists?

Hobson: Usually, yes. I’ve had a student, for example, who’s now an intern at the Mayo Clinic. He did a five-year degree in chemistry, biology, and piano. He followed through with everything, and did extremely well. Very often we find that some of these scientists play the piano rather well, and it may be because they don’t have to. They don’t think of it as their main activity, and yet they devour it as a very interesting hobby. I have a chamber orchestra there in Urbana, Sinfonia da Camera, and our audience is very often made up of scientists and mathematicians, physicists especially. It’s curious that they’re interested in music so much.
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BD:   Is there a special joy about teaching someone who is going at the music perhaps from a scientific angle?

Hobson: We can discuss things such as the logic of music. Certainly there should be, and is, a lot of logic in music. I find it very interesting. Of course, I teach most of the people individually, so every time one comes into a lesson, there’s a different approach that can be taken. It’s not by any means set, and it would become very boring if it was, even with the same student week after week. It’s very interesting to try, as a teacher, to find the right thing to say. That may very often be not very much. The student may need encouragement. Sometimes they may need a real kick to be pushed in the right direction, or pushed out of getting into some very bad habits. Another time, it may be getting them psychologically prepared to give a performance, which many students really don’t have a great deal of experience of.

BD:   Then the other side of the coin is you are teaching people who perhaps are going to try for the big career?

Hobson: Oh, yes. There’s such a proliferation of competitions now that many of them will try and can be successful. That’s also good, though there probably are too many competitions to really help with careers anymore.

BD:   Are there too many young pianists coming along?

Hobson: There are very many young pianists, but I would hardly say too many. It’s a very exacting profession after all, and it tends to self-correct, in that there aren’t that many people who will follow through to the end, or to the final degree in piano.

BD:   They drop out along the way?

Hobson: They’ll drop out along the way, or they’ll decide that some other aspect of music, or some other discipline is what they want.

BD:   Are there times when you encourage them to go into some other discipline? [Vis-à-vis the recording shown at right, see my interviews with Morton Gould, and Cecil Effinger.]

Hobson: That’s a difficult one. I would put it a different way... I don’t discourage them from going into other things, and I do not try to force them to go into a career in music if they’re not sure. It’s very important that anybody who wants a career in music has to absolutely want that more than anything else. They cannot stop themselves. Once that’s happening, then you know you’re on the right track, no matter what external successes or problems may come along the way.

BD:   You don’t need to mention names, but are there some fine pianists who simply haven’t gotten the right break, or the luck to be in the right place at the right time, and are languishing somewhere and not making a career?

Hobson: I would say many, and it doesn’t mean that they are failures, because by which method do we measure success in the world, especially the strange world of superstardom in music and the arts? There’s only one Yo-Yo Ma, of course, and that doesn’t mean the other cellists who will never achieve that level of stardom are any less successful.

BD:   Then let me ask the question in two parts. How do you measure success in music generally, and how do you measure your own success?

Hobson: I tend to enjoy and admire performances rather than performers. I’m very, very happy when I hear the same performer over and over again, and I’m consistently pleased by what I hear. Thereby, this person is making a reputation in at least my mind, and I’m sure in other people’s as well. By the same token, if you hear a performer — famous or not — play consistently in a disappointing way, then that person’s reputation is tarnished. This sometimes has nothing, whatsoever, to do with financial success, or which concert series you happen to play on. There are so many factors involved in that.

BD:   Let me turn my previous question around. Again, without naming names, are there some who are constantly in the limelight who maybe shouldn’t be there either at all, or not anymore?

Hobson: Oh yes, and you would find concurrence amongst most musicians that there are people like that. The one great advantage that we in music have probably even more than the theater, and certainly more than dance, is that there is a long haul. One can expect to pursue a career over several decades, and not necessarily shine brightly in the first two or three years. In the cases where people have shone brightly very early on in their career, they’ve had some very devastating negative effects later.

BD:   So rather than going for the immediate Oscar, you’re hoping for the Life Achievement Award?

Hobson: I think so. That’s what most musicians would like to feel they are after, and that probably is the best measure of success.

* * * * *

BD: Coming back to the second part of that question, how are you measuring your own success?

Hobson: I’m not sure that I think about measuring my success all the time. There are certain things that I would like to achieve. Sometimes these are short term goals, such as learning how to conduct a certain work or finding the opportunity to conduct that work in the right circumstances, and then studying for that. Whether that would be conducting from the keyboard — which I do quite a bit with classical pieces, and also some romantic concertos — that’s a very great challenge, because you have to learn how to play the piece to your satisfaction, and also have your wits about you to conduct the orchestra in a way that helps them to play, and not just to wave the arms frantically with no particular result.

BD: Do you ever find that you, the performer, are at odds with you, the conductor?
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Hobson: [Laughs] Occasionally in rehearsal, yes. But by the time I get to performance, I hammer those things out. Sometimes it feels very strange, such as when you’re conducting a piece like the Ravel concerto from the keyboard. The movements and the timing of a left-hand gesture at the same time as some very intricate right hand passage can be difficult. Of course, that piece was not meant to be conducted from the keyboard. We deserve what we get as performer-conductors, but it’s a great challenge, and it’s very satisfying. Certainly, in Mozart especially, and in Beethoven, I find that getting rid of the middle person is a great advantage. If you have an orchestra that is accomplished enough to think of these concerti as chamber music, then coming out of a cadenza and matching up with a pianissimo entrance is very, very simple. You do not have to pass on your wishes to a conductor who then transmits them to the orchestra.

BD:   Are you really teaching the orchestra to be more self-sufficient?

Hobson: Exactly, and to listen, which is really what it’s all about. One hates to see great orchestras playing as if they’ve abdicated all responsibility to the conductor for the result. They will do their bit and they will play their instruments nicely, but it’s up to the conductor to see that everything’s all right. I think that’s sad. It should be everybody wanting it to be good.

BD:   What you just described seems almost to be an adversarial process.

Hobson: Yes.

BD:   So you want it more of a communal process?

Hobson: I think it should be. That’s the best kind of playing from large orchestras. I’ve heard the Chicago Symphony and the New York Philharmonic when that kind of intimate music making is going on, and they sound great.

BD:   Have you ever conducted a piece with a different soloist that you had previously conducted with yourself at the keyboard?

Hobson: Yes.

BD:   Is that strange?

Hobson: No, it isn’t. I find that I’m in a different role when I’m conducting. I’m completely concerned with what the orchestra does, and I try to steer the orchestra with the soloist. In a way it’s less of a responsibility.

BD:   You have less to do, so do you find yourself being bored, or feeling that you should have more to do?

Hobson: No, I don’t think so. Neither do I feel that when I play a concerto with another conductor that I have also conducted from the keyboard. It’s very easy to adjust. It’s like driving on one side of the road in England and another side here in the U.S.

BD:   Speaking of adjustments, when you perform in different halls, each time you have a new instrument. How long does it take you to adjust to that particular instrument?

Hobson: If it’s a very good instrument, no time at all. When it’s a difficult instrument, one tends to be depressed for about five minutes, and then you become adjusted to it. Also, there is the hall. You have to work with what’s there. There’s no point in fretting about the piano. If it’s a mechanical problem that can be fixed by a good technician, one hopes that it will be taken care of. But if it’s just the quality of the instrument, or the quality of the hall, one has to make the very best of it. String players have this all the time when they play in modern dry halls. They hate it...

BD:   ...but at least they’re bringing their own instrument, which they’re familiar with.

Hobson: They bring their own instrument, but they have to play in an extra expressive style to make it really come through.

BD:   Have you been pretty lucky as far as instruments that you’ve encountered?
hobson

Hobson: Not always, no. There are many places where there are just dreadful instruments, and rarely does one find a great instrument in excellent condition, unfortunately.

BD:   Do you really have to go to the big performing centers before you can expect something good?

Hobson: Yes, although it’s not only the big performing centers. Sometimes those don’t have the very best instruments, and that’s a pity. But on the other hand, sometimes you can go to the middle of nowhere and find a very great piano.

BD:   I was just thinking it goes with expectation.

Hobson: Yes, of course one expects good things in a large center and large hall. When I played in Hamburg in the big hall there, I was not disappointed by the quality of the main Steinway.

BD:   Do you always play Steinway instruments?

Hobson: I’m a Steinway artist, so most of the time, when one’s available, yes.

BD:   Do you find there’s a huge difference if you have to play a Baldwin, or a Bösendorfer, or some other instrument?

Hobson: There can be a vast difference, but, as I said before, one becomes attuned very quickly to a piano and its sound and its feel. After that, I don’t give it much consideration.

* * * * *

BD:   When you’re playing concerts around the world, are they mostly solo recitals or mostly concertos?

Hobson: It varies. I would say it’s about 50/50. For my most recent trip to England, I played a recital at the Wigmore Hall, five performances of Tchaikovsky’s Second Concerto with the Scottish National, and then some other recitals around the country. In the U.S. I have tended to play a few more concerti with the orchestras than recitals, but that’s partially because the recital is on the wane in some communities.

BD:   Is that a good thing, bad thing, or just a thing?

Hobson: I think it’s a bad thing. Recitals are a great thing that draws people together. I remember attending recitals of so many people, not only piano recitals, but also vocal and violin recitals. One tends to remember those longer than concerto appearances somehow. I don’t know why. It may be partially because the artist is there on stage alone for the whole evening.

BD:   That’s the whole impact?

Hobson: That’s right, and there’s a variety of repertoire. There is lots of time to become familiar with the artist and to enjoy the music in a long-term manner.

BD:   Do you feel you have to try to make more impact in a concerto because it’s so concentrated?

Hobson: Yes. Oh, sure. Sometimes you have to get it all done in 20 minutes. I wouldn’t say it’s any easier to play a concerto, because there’s no time to get warmed up. By the time you’re finished with the piece, it’s all over. Sometimes it’s very nice to play two concerti. I did that here in Chicago when I played at Grant Park a few years ago. We did the Weber Koncertstück [about 17 minutes], and the Strauss Burlesque [about 20 minutes]. It’s nice to do that, I must say.

BD:   Was there other music in between?

Hobson: The concert began with something, and then ended with an orchestral work, so the piano was straddling the middle.

BD:   It was orchestra, you, intermission, you, orchestra?

Hobson: Yes. I was on either side of the intermission.

BD:   That seems like a fine way to showcase the artist.

Hobson: Yes.

BD: When you’re thinking of a solo recital, you have several hundred years of literature to choose from. How do you decide what pieces you’ll play, or perhaps what pieces you’ll play this year and which you’ll leave until next year?

Hobson: I really am not very organized about planning recitals way ahead. I tend to choose a work, or groups of works that I really want to feature in a recital. Just recently, it was the Diabelli Variations.

BD: That takes a whole hour.

Hobson: Yes, and it was the second half of the concert. So I didn’t want to play more Beethoven, and I didn’t want to foreshadow it with Mozart or Haydn on this particular occasion, although I could have done that. My feeling at that time was it would make the Mozart and the Haydn perhaps seem less significant when the concert is capped by the Diabelli Variations. Probably I wouldn’t think that on another occasion, but that was what came to mind when I was planning this program. I was also thinking that it might be nice to go backwards, so I had the Schumann Sonata and also two Schubert Impromptus in the first half. Sometimes I like to do complete sets of things. For example, I did the Beethoven Sonatas a few years ago in eight recitals. I also did some very unusual music, which I’ve also recorded, called the London Piano School, which is a collection mainly of music written for England in the 18th and 19th centuries.

BD: You have rediscovered this material?

Hobson: A colleague of mine at the University of Illinois, Nicholas Temperley, a musicologist, has published a 20-volume set called the London Pianoforte School, from which these pieces were taken. I performed three recitals’ worth in New York and London, and recorded them. That was sort of a ‘set’ for me when I decided to do that. The repertoire was there. I think program-planning is a very great art. One doesn’t want to put pieces that just don’t go well together for whatever reason. The Goldberg Variations followed by the Diabelli Variations has been done before, and I find that a little bit too much to take. This is not because the music is not full of greatness, grandeur, and variety, but because it’s two enormous sets of variations following each other. What audience can really appreciate that to its fullest?

BD: It’s almost like doing a double bill on the operas Salome and then Electra.

Hobson: [Laughs] Exactly! On the other hand, one doesn’t want to do a great work, such as the Diabelli, and follow it with Strauss waltz transcriptions for the very opposite reason, because it tends to cheapen the effect that you have made. The other way around would be impossible, also. So there are certain things that one should probably avoid doing in putting pieces together. I suppose I am rather more adventurous than some people in programming and putting things together. Not that I play a great deal of 20th-century music, but it’s a very good idea to mix periods when you’re putting together a recital.

* * * * *

BD:   When you come to a large work that perhaps you haven’t studied, how do you decide if you’re going to spend the time to learn it and work the piece into your fingers?

Hobson: That’s a very good question. I’m fortunate in that I sight-read well and can grasp a work quickly — particularly a piano work — by playing it through once or twice. I will know then whether it’s something that I want to do. If I’ve heard it before, that’s also a very good way of knowing, as well as discovering new works by hearing them on the radio or in a concert hall.

BD:   [Pursuing the point] What about them grabs you?

Hobson: It’s difficult to put that into words. There are pieces that I’ve looked at and have played them through wanting to like them, and liking many things about them. But then I found the totality didn’t speak to me. It didn’t make me want to go any further. It just didn’t keep my interest. That’s a very personal thing. I’ve wanted, for example, to like some of the Medtner sonatas. I’ve been intrigued by them, but then I’ve played them and I thought I didn’t really want to spend the time learning them. Now, I may change my mind in five years...

BD:   I trust you’re perfectly happy if someone else plays them and has great success?

Hobson: Oh yes, of course. There are certain of the Godowsky studies on Chopin etudes which I did for a recording [shown at left.]. I liked them very much, but I had prejudices about tampering with Chopin. They’re very, very difficult, and they’re a bit tasteless. So when I got into them, I found really I didn’t like them anymore, even though they were very intriguing compositions.

BD:   Because of the tampering, should there be two composers’ names assigned with equal value?

Hobson: In those pieces, yes. Luckily, all of the people who have reviewed that record and subsequent records of Godowsky which have come out from other people, are really accepting these pieces and are intrigued by them. But there are 53 of these pieces altogether, and I’ve found the ones I chose are those that most interest me, and my interest is not as strong in the others. I’m not sure that I will work on the rest of them.

BD:   Those are the ones that are most successful in your eyes?

Hobson: Yes, from a compositional point of view.

BD:   Do you play any premieres?

Hobson: I have done some, yes. I’ve done a piece which was written for me and my chamber orchestra by a composer who is now at Eastman, David Liptak. It was called Chiaroscuro.

BD:   Did you have any input, or did he just give it to you completed?

Hobson: He knew my work as a conductor and a pianist, so I had nothing to do with it until I saw the finished product.

BD:   You didn’t ask for a little change here or there?

Hobson: No, I didn’t. I had done some of his works before, and I knew that he knew what he was doing. I was happy to see what it was that he came up with.

BD:   Confidence in the composer means a great deal.

Hobson: Oh, yes.

BD:   What advice do you have for someone who wants to write music for the piano?

Hobson: The thing to do is to know the instrument, play the instrument, or if you can’t play the instrument very well, get a friend to play you the instrument a lot. Then try and get to know what works and what doesn’t work. I was very interested to hear John Browning talking about Barber writing the Concerto, and saying that he was writing the piece for John Browning. He would ask Browning to come and play everything he knew (Chopin, Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, you name it) so he could observe the pianist that he was writing the piece for, playing to see what this pianist did best and what would be the most effective way of writing. I think that’s interesting, fashioning it for a particular performer.

BD:   Then are the best performers of this work Browning and his ilk, rather than, say, other kinds of technicians?

Hobson: I would think so, yes. Now, that’s an extreme case. One doesn’t have to write it for a particular performer, but it’s good to know what the limits are in the piano. It reminds me of another occasion... When I was a student at Yale and there was a contemporary festival, there was a new piece of Xenakis that was going to be performed. They sent it to me. There was no money to pay the performer, so I was just to do it gratis. But if I had questions, there was a budget for me to call Xenakis in Paris. I did immediately find a problem, because on the first page there were several chords that were absolutely impossible to play.

BD:   They had 11 or 12 notes?

Hobson: Yes, exactly. I worried over this for a bit, and then eventually called up Xenakis in Paris. He said just to do my best. [Laughs] That’s interesting!

BD:   He just wanted you to come as close to it as you can?
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Hobson: Right.

BD:   Then yours was your approximation, and someone else will be their approximation?

Hobson: Yes.

BD:   Are we, perhaps, even getting your approximation of Beethoven, and your approximation of Godowsky?

Hobson: Of course. We are, after all, trying to do our best.

BD:   How different are the various approximations that you hear?

Hobson: Sometimes not different enough. It would be nice if we could have the same kind of individuality of approach as there was in the 1910s and 1920s. Sometimes that came out of excess, which we frown upon rightly, but there’s still a lot of latitude.

BD:   Now we’re going to the other extreme and not upgrading enough excess?

Hobson: That pendulum now is swinging back a bit. There seems to be a lot more freedom, for example, in the authentic performances that are coming down than there was 10 years ago. They seem a lot more natural, a lot more fresh, and sometimes they have learned to be more expressive. The reason why one wants to perform on original instruments is to get back to the earthiness, for example, and to play forte in Mozart, which we had lost playing on modern instruments because these modern instruments are so big, and loud, and made of different materials, meaning that we had to play tentatively. One of the great values of authentic instruments is teaching the rest of us performers to see what can be done, and to use the strength, the raw approach to the score. I don’t mean that in a sense of being rough, but the unfettered approach to the score.

BD:   Do you ever use the old instruments?

Hobson: I have played them, yes, but if I was going to really give a concert on one, I would want to devote a lot of time to it because it does take quite a bit of getting used to. After all, I’ve spent most of my life on the modern instrument, and I feel I can be more effective on that.

BD:   Do you find the old pieces translate well onto the new piano?

Hobson: Oh, yes. I do not hold the view that one shouldn’t play these pieces on a modern piano. There was some very strange talking about the London Piano School, which was a series of three recordings that I did. The first pieces were written in 1766 and the last piece in 1873, so it spanned the time from Mozart to Brahms. In the Gramophone Magazine in England, there was a very favorable review, and the only complaint was that I should have done these on authentic instruments. [Laughs] Can you imagine how many authentic instruments I would have had to have from different countries and from different periods in order to do justice to this? When you play a piece of Brahms, does anybody say it should have been played on an authentic instrument? Maybe some do, but one doesn’t hear that very often.

BD:   Do we get to a certain point and then accept it on modern instruments, but not before that point?

Hobson: Yes, but it’s getting further and further now, and people are looking into Strauss, and certainly the Brahms, so we may come right up to the present day.

BD:   Some people might demand an authentic Boulez piano, or perhaps an authentic synthesizer!

Hobson: [Laughs] Right.

* * * * *

BD: Do you play the same in the recording studio that you do in the concert hall?
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Hobson: I try. It’s taken me a while to get comfortable in the recording studio. I did my first recordings in the early ’80s, just at the beginning of the digital era. I have always taken the approach of doing long takes, trying to approximate a performance.

BD:   That’s at least a whole movement?

Hobson: Yes, a whole movement if I possibly can. I do two or three takes of a whole movement, and then I’ll do smaller chunks. But very often with short pieces, I like to try them over and over again until I might be very lucky and just hit it right. Then everything will be perfect, and I don’t need to edit. That might be a foolish thing to do from a record producer’s point of view, but actually they like it because they have less editing work to do. But it makes me feel as if I’ve really striven and accomplished something.

BD:   For a soloist it’s easy, but for an orchestra you’re paying 90 people to be there...

Hobson: Yes, you have to be careful. But even in orchestral sessions that I’ve done, I’d gone for long takes. When I did the Parergon of Strauss with the Philharmonia [shown at left], we were on a tight schedule, and for one reason or another, somebody hadn’t shown up. One of the musicians wasn’t there, or was late getting back from lunch, so we started, and we knew that we didn’t have much time. We just took the whole piece through, and except for a couple of small edits to get rid of noises, it’s just about a complete take. There is something about the excitement of doing it like that. If you go into a recording session thinking it’ll be okay, and we can just edit everything, you won’t come up with a very good result.

BD:   Can you edit the life out of it?

Hobson: Yes. It’s better to go with the nervous tension or anxiety, even if you like wanting to play it right. You should want to get it right as if in a performance.

BD:   Do you feel that the public has been spoiled by listening at home to records, and then going to the performance and expecting that same kind of perfection?

Hobson: Yes, but over the years, technical perfection has improved a lot. You’re going to get probably much more accurate playing in piano recitals than you did years ago.

BD:   Has the musicianship improved commensurately with it?

Hobson: Not necessarily, no, and it would be unreasonable to expect that. But the level of everyday technical perfection certainly has improved in string instruments, vocally, and the piano, certainly. So, it’s probably not all that different than what you’re going to get on a recording.

BD:   Is the music that you play, for everyone?

Hobson: No, but it can be. It was, after all, ‘popular’ music in Mozart’s time, and now we put it on a pedestal and say this is Classical Music.

BD:   Is that a mistake?

Hobson: No, I don’t think so. You don’t have to play Mozart on a synthesizer in order to make it popular. The original is certainly very acceptable and very accessible, and people enjoy it. The thing that keeps people away most of the time is just the thought of going to a serious concert in a serious concert hall, and dressing up, and sitting quietly. That’s not for everybody.

BD:   It’s like the thought of reading War and Peace.

Hobson: Right, but once you get into it, you could enjoy it.

BD:   But even then, it’s not like reading you might do while at the beach.

Hobson: No. But on the other hand, making a miniseries out of it, or serializing it in a magazine is not necessarily the way to get people to read War and Peace. You have to find some way to get them to swallow it whole.

BD:   What is the way, then, to get more and more younger audiences into the concert hall?

Hobson: I don’t think you necessarily have to take the blockbuster works first. You can get people to listen to Mozart’s serenades and symphonies. A great experience is a choral masterpiece. If you can get them inside the door to see that, and to hear that, it is one of the things that may turn people on to music more than anything else, because there is so much involved. It’s such an expression of faith, of music, with singing, playing, and everybody working together. This is also true of opera. Opera on television is wonderful from that point of view.

BD:   Is bringing opera into everybody’s living room a good thing?

Hobson: A very good thing.

BD:   Does that translate into more people buying tickets?

Hobson: I think so. It probably does, although an opera audience is a very specialized one. But there doesn’t seem to be any lack of people wanting to go to the opera, even with very high prices.

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BD: We’ve danced around this a little bit, so let me ask the question straight out. What is the purpose of music?

Hobson: For humanity, for a musician, or for somebody personally speaking?

BD:   Say, for a general audience.

Hobson: It’s something that can touch the soul. Very little understanding is necessary for it to touch, and for it to have an effect.

BD:   Is that to say it’s simplistic?

Hobson: Not at all. But you cannot appreciate a Shakespeare play unless you have some idea of what’s being said. It’s a foreign language to you. You don’t get it, and I would say a stylized dance, the same way. You have to learn something before you can really appreciate what’s going on in a ballet, but not so with music. There’s this elemental force there, which can be appreciated. It’s a universal language, and I would say that’s the most important thing about music. It can touch people from different cultures, and from different countries, and that’s very special. For musicians who could not live without music, there are deeper meanings. There are associations with stages in one’s life. When one says one loves a piece of music, it means that familiarity does not breed contempt, because as a practicing musician, you have to come to these pieces on a daily basis for years.

BD:   Well, do you love the pieces of music, or do you simply love music?

Hobson: I think that I love music, and this is made manifest through the pieces of music. If you played me pieces of music which I detest, then I might come to say that I don’t love music. But I don’t think that would be true.

BD: [We then stopped for a moment so he could record a Station Break (“Hello, this is Ian Hobson, and you’re listening to WNIB, Classical 97, in Chicago”), and I took the opportunity to ask his birthdate, which was listed incorrectly in one of the reference books!]

Hobson: I’ll be in Poland on my birthday this year.

BD:   Are audiences different from continent to continent, or country to country, or even city to city?

Hobson: Yes, very much so, and that’s one of the joys of playing all over the place, and experiencing that as a performer. Down in Miami in this country, I remember playing Chopin festivals and recitals, and there was always a very almost violently ecstatic audience there. They seem to really love music, and they express it openly.

BD:   Are they mostly older retired people, or mostly Hispanic?

Hobson: I think Hispanic, but certainly not a particularly old group. I found in Israel the same kind of audience. They are very passionately devoted to music, and have very strong opinions. They can easily express their satisfaction or dissatisfaction. In England, things tend to be much quieter and more polite, even sedate sometimes. Although that doesn’t mean the audience doesn’t like what’s going on. That’s just the way they react. One gets many variations all over the place. I remember once playing at the very southern tip of New Zealand when I was on a tour with the New Zealand Symphony. It was a recital that had been postponed for a few days because of my illness, and the hall that I was to be playing in was not available. It’s the only town in the world that I know where they could ask if I would like to do the recital in this hall or that hall? So, I chose one and gave the recital there. There were a hundred people because it was meant to be previously in a library or museum, and this was in a large hall. After the first piece, they clapped for about eight or nine seconds, just enough for me to get off the stage. When I came back, they clapped for probably 20 seconds. After the intermission it was the same thing. When I played the final piece, they clapped for me to get off the stage, and then everything stopped. After about two or three more seconds, they started up again clapping, and then wouldn’t stop clapping until I played an encore. It was the most peculiar sensation. As soon as the performer gets off the stage, they’re out of sight and out of mind.

BD:   Did you think you’d failed?

Hobson: [Laughs] Well, I was beginning to wonder in the first part, but then when they clapped at the end, I was relieved.

BD:   Do you usually try to play encores?

Hobson: Oh, yes. Encores are a very important part of the recital. I rather like to do things that are more lighthearted, perhaps a bit more virtuosic, some transcriptions...
hobson

BD: Flashy things?

Hobson: Sometimes, but not always. Sentimental things perhaps. It’s not my style to play very serious music that takes a long time to get through for encore. It’s a time where one can let one’s hair down somewhat, and the audience can have a bit more fun.

* * * * *

BD:   Do you also accompany others in solo recitals?

Hobson: Oh, yes. I’ve done quite a bit of chamber music at the university with my colleagues.

BD:   Is that satisfying?

Hobson: Oh yes, very much so. I first came upon that in a big way at the Marlboro Festival in 1975. Some of the people that I met there I know now as colleagues, and we play. It’s a great privilege to get to know the chamber music repertoire, even though you don’t always play it professionally... the Brahms trios and quartets, and many other pieces from all eras. Most pianists should get to know that material because it teaches you a lot more than just playing solo music.

BD:   Was Beethoven right in calling his pieces Sonatas for Piano and Violin, rather than violin and piano?

Hobson: Yes. Mozart, also. The piano parts tend to be rather bigger than the violin parts initially, but by the time of Beethoven’s middle period, he was giving the violin quite a lot to do also.

BD:   Is playing piano fun?

Hobson: Yes. In addition to the music, it’s an intellectual challenge. Just the tactile sensation of making those keys work is probably akin to somebody who’s very adept with a computer or with a typewriter. There’s a pleasurable sensation of working with the hands.

BD:   Are you conscious of the audience that’s out there while you’re performing?

Hobson: Yes, but one doesn’t concentrate on them. You try to block out any kind of coughers, or people who are dropping things or moving papers around. But one is very much aware of the audience, of the fact that they’re there, and whether they’re attentive.

BD:   Can they perhaps make you play even better than you thought you could on a particular night?

Hobson: Yes, I think so.

BD:   You seem to enjoy working at the University of Illinois.

Hobson: Yes. I’ve been there now for 15 years, and I find it a very flexible place for me. As I said before, I enjoy teaching. I think I learn from teaching. I’ve learned probably quite a bit of repertoire that I may not have come across otherwise. The position allows me to travel for my concerts and conducting engagements, and at the same time it’s a stimulating atmosphere to work with colleagues in musicology, and other instruments, and other departments of the university. So yes, I have enjoyed it very much.

BD: Thank you for all of the music, and for spending the time with me today.

Hobson: Thank you. I’ve enjoyed speaking with you.

This conversation was recorded in Chicago on May 24, 1991. Portions were broadcast on WNIB in 1993 and 1997, and on Contemporary Classical Internet Radio in 2005, 2006, and 2012. This transcription was made in 2024, and posted on this website at that time.

To see a full list (with links) of interviews which have been transcribed and posted on this website, click here. To read my thoughts on editing these interviews for print, as well as a few other interesting observations, click here.

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Award - winning broadcaster Bruce Duffie was with WNIB, Classical 97 in Chicago from 1975 until its final moment as a classical station in February of 2001. His interviews have also appeared in various magazines and journals since 1980, and he now continues his broadcast series on WNUR-FM, as well as on Contemporary Classical Internet Radio.

You are invited to visit his website for more information about his work, including selected transcripts of other interviews, plus a full list of his guests. He would also like to call your attention to the photos and information about his grandfather, who was a pioneer in the automotive field more than a century ago. You may also send him E-Mail with comments, questions and suggestions.