The College of Music will host an “Afternoon of Musical Delight” at 2 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 31, in Ruby Diamond Concert Hall, featuring the premiere FSU performance of the college’s newest faculty member, pianist Ian Hobson.
The performance will serve as a special welcome to Hobson, who comes to the College of Music from the Center for Advanced Study at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), where he served as the Swanlund Professor of Piano since 2000.
Hobson is recognized internationally for his command of an extraordinarily comprehensive repertoire, his consummate performances of the Romantic masters, his deft and idiomatic readings of neglected piano music old and new, and his assured conducting from both the piano and the podium. A lauded performer, Hobson is also a dedicated scholar and educator who has pioneered renewed interest in the music of such lesser-known masters as Ignaz Moscheles and Johann Hummel.
As guest soloist, Hobson has appeared with many of the world’s major orchestras, including The Philadelphia Orchestra and the symphony orchestras of Chicago, Baltimore, Houston, Indianapolis and St. Louis; abroad, he has been heard with Great Britain’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, The London Philharmonic Orchestra, Scottish National Orchestra, ORF-Vienna, Orchester der Beethovenhalle, Moscow Chopin Orchestra, Israeli Sinfonietta and New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.
One of the youngest ever graduates of the Royal Academy of Music, Hobson received a B.A. from Cambridge, and M.M. (piano, organ, and harpsichord) and D.M.A. (piano and conducting) from the Yale School of Music.