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Sinfonia da Camera: Teachers and Disciples »

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  500 S. Goodwin Ave. Urbana, IL 61801
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It is possible that when backed into an alley at gunpoint, even the most dedicated advocate of classical music could not produce any significant data on Ignaz Moscheles. However unlikely this scenario is, it does remind us that many fine artists of the past need an advocate in the present. At the University, Ian Hobson, Swanlund Professor of Music and Music Director of the Sinfonia da Camera, has long championed Moscheles’ music with performance and recordings. On May 2, with Professor Hobson conducting and playing the keyboard, the Sinfonia da Camera will premiere Ignaz Moscheles’ “Piano Concerto #8.”

To begin, Ignaz’ last name is pronounced “MOSH-el-ez,” with the accent on the first syllable. He was a Bohemian (though, today we would say Czech) from Prague, where he was born to a wealthy Jewish merchant family in 1794. By the time he died in 1870 in Leipzig, in what is now Germany, he had composed 142 numbered works and been acclaimed as a teacher, conductor and keyboard virtuoso. His professional career lasted just over fifty years. His career included touring as an acclaimed concert pianist, where he performed duets with Giacomo Meyerbeer, Frederic Chopin and his good friend Felix Mendelssohn. Moscheles promoted the works of Beethoven, and after an 1824 meeting, really began the musical careers of Felix Mendelssohn and Mendelssohn’s sister, Fanny. It would be Mendelssohn who would lure him from England to the Leipzig Conservatory where he would finish his great career as a teacher and administrator. After Mendelssohn’s untimely death in 1847, Moscheles promoted the great composer’s work as a musician and teacher, making the Leipzig Conservatory one of Europe’s great musical institutions.

Yet, it is Moscheles’ work as a composer that he is best remembered for today, or at least, somewhat remembered. The most listings any internet site had for recordings of his works was 31, and many of these albums had only a single cut of his 142 known works. On a side note, the same site listed 31 cds for Paris Hilton — brutal statistical proof that life is not fair. Despite the involvement of such world class pianists as Howard Shelley, Piers Lane and our own Ian Hobson, much of his work is unrecorded or neglected. Both Shelley and Hobson have recorded Moscheles’ seven complete piano concertos, which may be the finest introduction to his talent as a pianist and a composer. Now, Professor Hobson is ready to step into uncharted territory orchestrating and reconstructing Moscheles’ “Piano Concerto #8.”

Professor Hobson recalls his discovery of the magic of Moscheles. “A long time ago in England, I found some sheet music of this man, but his music was almost unknown at the time,” said Hobson. “The more I got to know him, the more I came to respect his music. Eventually, I would record all of his completed piano concertos.”

As to this discovery, Hobson explained, “It is a piano sketch that I acquired through the Royal Academy of Music. It is dated 1838 [Moscheles was in residence in England at that time], and has some notes as to which instruments should be used in the orchestration, but not much else.”

How does one orchestrate a master? “I have consulted with Henry Roche, Moscheles’ great, great, great grandson, and I had to compare counter melodies and orchestral accompaniment from his other concertos when appropriate. Also, I only used instruments he mentioned in his notes,” Professor Hobson said.

On May 2, Hobson will conduct and from the keyboard, play for the first time, a completed version of this 1838 piano sketch. This great 19th century work can be heard in Urbana in 2009 for the first time with UI’s own Sinfonia da Camera playing Professor Hobson’s orchestrations. Also on the bill are teacher-pupil connections from Joseph Haydn to Mendelssohn that put this historical resurrection in context.