Benjamin Hochman, 30, a distinguished concert pianist born and raised in Israel, makes his San Francisco Symphony debut Saturday, July 10, at Davies Symphony Hall. Hochman is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music and the Mannes College of Music, and now makes his home in Manhattan. He has performed with orchestras and in chamber groups all over the world. He spoke to J. reporter Stacey Palevsky by phone June 25 from New York.
Q: How old were you when you started playing piano? A: I was 6 years old.
Q: Why piano? A: It’s a funny story. I come from a nonmusical family. My parents are academics (they both teach literature, my father at Hebrew University and my mother at Ben Gurion University). When I was a child, the woman who looked after me in the afternoons was a music teacher. She sat me down at her piano and taught me how to play some folk tunes. And she called my parents and said, “You should give him piano lessons, he has a good musical ear.” The rest is history.
Q: Can you tell me a little bit about your childhood? A: I was born and raised in Jerusalem and lived there until I was 17. It’s a wonderful place to grow up. It was a place full of music and great artists. I had wonderful teachers and also had a very rich musical life. A lot of the first experiences I had with classical music were with the Israel Philharmonic and the Jerusalem Symphony, which present music at the highest level. I had a really solid foundation when I came to the U.S. [in 1998].
Q: Have you played with any of the Israeli symphonies you grew up admiring? A: I’ve played with the Jerusalem Symphony and the Israeli Philharmonic, who I played with [in 2004]. Making my Carnegie Hall debut with the Israel Philharmonic and conductor Pinchas Zukerman was very meaningful for me.
Q: You’ll be playing Beethoven on July 10 with the SF Symphony. Tell me about the Emperor Concerto. What emotions does it evoke for you? A: It’s the last of the five concertos Beethoven wrote. It’s a pretty remarkable piece. It has a lot of power, a lot of grandeur. It’s a piece that places the piano in opposition to the orchestra. It’s very intense and turbulent, and at same time there’s a lot of tenderness hidden between the intensity. It’s a piece that plays with contrast. It is one of the most beloved piano concertos and for good reason — it’s a really exquisite piece of music.
Q: When you appear as a soloist with a symphony, what kind of prep or practicing do you do with the symphony? A: It’s different in every case. The most usual situation is to have one or two rehearsals and that will be the case in San Francisco as well. But before I rehearse, there are years of preparation in the sense that I start learning these pieces long before I play them in concert. Most of the concertos I play in concert I learned when I was quite young — I first played Beethoven’s “Emperor Concerto” in my teens. So there is a process of getting to know these pieces.
Q: You’ve performed all over the world. Do you ever get nervous before going on stage? A: Of course. Nerves are a natural part of what we do. Any performer who says he has no nerves is not being completely honest. Some people call it nerves, others call it adrenaline, but whatever it is it’s really the excitement that goes into making music in public. If you approach and channel this in the right way, it can contribute to a wonderful performance.
Q: When you hear a piece of music or see a score, what makes you say, I want to play that? A: In a lot of cases, it’s because I’ve had an experience with the piece as a listener. I think with great music — be it Bach, Beethoven or even music written today — there’s something that speaks to you and speaks to your heart. It’s something that resonates emotionally or intellectually or somewhere in between, and you hear it and say, ‘Wow, that’s incredible, that’s amazing.’ I try to only play music like that if I can, because life is too short not to play music that’s not incredible.
Q: Have you ever felt a piece of music was simply too difficult to play? How do you push through that mental hurdle? A: The music I choose to play is often very complex and inspring and it takes me a long time to feel comfortable with the music. I might be able to play it very quickly on a technical level, but I like to go deeply into the music I play because I feel I have more to say that way. If I feel stuck with a piece, it usually just means I need more time with it. For me it’s a process of uncovering layers of meaning in the music.
Q: What do you miss most about Israel, and how do you stay connected to your culture living in New York City? A: I think what I miss most about Israel is a certain lifestyle, the rhythm of life there, the openness that people have toward one another. I stay connected to that by staying in touch with friends who are Israeli, whether they live in New York or in Israel, and by going there and spending time there, catching up with people I care about, going to restaurants I love, going to find best hummus in Israel, like I did last month.
Q: And where is the best hummus in Israel? A: Well, that’s a very controversial subject. But in my opinion, it’s in Jaffa, at Abu Hasan.
-- Interview conducted, condensed and edited by Stacey Palevsky
Watch Benjamin Hochman perform Beethoven at the 92ndStreetY:
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Benjamin Hochman, 30, a distinguished concert pianist born and raised in Israel, makes his San Francisco Symphony