Ian Hobson

In addition to being a celebrated 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, Johann Hummel, and Richard Stöhr. He has also been an effective advocate of works written expressly for him by a number of today’s noted composers, including Robert Chumbley, John Gardner, Benjamin Lees, David Liptak, Alan Ridout, and Yehudi Wyner.

Mr. Hobson is known for artfully programming recital series showcasing the complete piano works of noted composers, matching the subtleties of the composer’s works for each concert. Reviewing Mr. Hobson’s most recent performance in his remarkable Schumann cycle, performed at the Tenri Cultural Center in New York City, Jeffrey Williams, wrote in the April 29, 2025 edition of the New York Concert Review: “Mr. Hobson played the theme with a simple steadiness, bringing its heavenly beauty forward without any self-indulgence, letting the sublime beauty of the music speak for itself. This was his overriding approach—Mr. Hobson did not feel any compunction to place his own “stamp” on the music. He is the servant of the composer (as it should be)—every note and phrase has been studied, considered, and played accordingly.”

Commenting on Mr. Hobson’s performance of Piano Quintet in E-flat major, Op. 44 Walter Aparicio wrote in New York Concert Review: “As the main theme from the first movement returns in its fugal state, the ensemble effectively paced this concluding section, heightening the excitement and fervent quality to the forefront—so much so that when the final chords sounded, the audience rose to their feet in applause.” (May 14, 2024) 

Veteran critic Harry Rolnick of ConcertoNet had this to say about Mr. Hobson’s Humoreske in his Schumann Cycle concert Love and Nature II last spring: “This was also Ian Hobson at his greatest. Not monumental pianism, not pictures of corteges or romance. Rather, Mr. Hobson was able to tie each short section together, as if foreordained.” (April 21, 2023)

Reviewing "Love and Nature I", George Grella of New York Classical Review wrote: “Hobson opened the Arabeske with elegance and grace...The pianist approached that feeling with a nice impetuosity and also control, modulation well between the music’s moods." (February 2023)

Ian Hobson performed "Sound Impressions" at SubCulture, a six-concert series featuring the complete solo piano repertoire of Ravel and Debussy. Similar endeavors include Mr. Hobson’s 2015 Uptown/Downtown: Preludes, Etudes, and Variations series—focusing on outstanding examples of each genre by Fauré, Schumann, Rachmaninoff, Debussy, and Szymanowski, with world premieres by Yehudi Wyner (Preludes), Robert Chumbley (Etudes), and Stephen Taylor (Variations)—and his performance of the complete solo piano works and chamber music with piano of Johannes Brahms, series entitled Johannes Brahms: Classical Inclinations in a Romantic Age. 

Mr. Hobson has 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. Recently, Mr. Hobson has been recording the solo and orchestral works of Polish composer Moritz Moszkowski; the first volume of orchestral works was awarded a 2020 "Diapason d’or – Découverte" by the French magazine Diapason.

Reviewing the second volume of Moszkowski’s solo piano compositions, Henry Fogel wrote in the
January/February 2023 edition of Fanfare, "In addition to technical virtuosity, the other components necessary for successful performances of Moszkowski’s music are warmth, charm, and a gift for employing meaningful degrees of rubato without losing the music’s pulse. Hobson has long demonstrated that he has all of those qualities, resulting in a very enjoyable recital of Romantic pianism."

Mr. Hobson continues his concerts as music director of the Sinfonia da Camera, a professional chamber orchestra affiliated with the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts and College of Fine and Applied Arts of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where Mr. Hobson is the Swanlund Emeritus Professor of Music.

As guest soloist, Ian Hobson has appeared with many of the world’s major orchestras; in the United States these include the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Philadelphia Orchestra, the symphony orchestras of Baltimore, Florida, Houston, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and the American Symphony Orchestra and Orquesta Sinfónica de Puerto Rico. 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, ORF-Vienna, Orchester der Beethovenhalle, Moscow Chopin Orchestra, Israeli Sinfonietta, and New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.

Since his debut in the double role of conductor and soloist with the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra in 1996, Maestro Hobson has been invited to lead the English Chamber Orchestra, the Sinfonia Varsovia (including an appearance at Carnegie Hall), the Pomeranian Philharmonic (Poland), the Fort Worth Chamber Orchestra (Bass Hall), and the Kibbutz Chamber Orchestra of Israel, among others.

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 Kosciuszko Competition in New York; in 2008 he was Chairman of Jury of the New York Piano Competition; and in 2010 he again served 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.