Benjamin Hochman | Pianist

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Globalization can mean many things. Hearing violinist and conductor Pinchas Zukerman say "Go Pens!" during a phone interview last week from China is one of them.

"I'm a hockey fanatic," he explains, saying he's had no trouble following the Penguins' bid for the Stanley Cup during his three-week Asian tour.

Zukerman is back in Pittsburgh this week to conduct the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in concerts Friday through Sunday at Heinz Hall that are devoted to music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The program consists of the "Cosi fan tutte" Overture, Piano Concerto No. 17 with Benjamin Hochman making his local debut as soloist, and four movements from the Haffner Serenade.

Nine years ago, Zukerman heard Hochman's playing for the first time when Hochman was accompanying Canadian violinist Jessica Linnebach at her entrance exam to study for the Manhattan School of Music in New York City.

"I knew Jessica's playing and that there would be no problem with her coming into our class," Zukerman recalls. She subsequently joined the Zukerman Chamber Players. But when Hochman started to play the piano reduction of the orchestral score of Bartok's Second Violin Concerto, Zukerman found himself saying, "Who is this pianist?"

Afterward, Zukerman talked to the two young musicians, congratulating both. He says he kept in touch with Hochman and the two clicked after playing some sonatas and chamber music.

"I knew (Hochman) had super talent, and he's grown beautifully," Zukerman says. "Now, he's married to (violinist) Jessica Koh. He's a great guy. It's wonderful to make music with a good friend."

Hochman says he started playing piano when he was 6 in Jerusalem. "I come from a family where everyone appreciates music but no one plays it. A baby sitter taught me to play Israeli folk songs on the piano and said I had a good ear. Then I started taking lessons."

A graduate of the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia and the Mannes College of Music in New York City, his teachers have included many top concert artists, such as Claude Frank, Leon Fleisher, Gary Graffman and Richard Goode.

At 28, Hochman has a blossoming career. He has performed with top orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic and the Chicago Symphony but is particularly excited about his Pittsburgh Symphony debut because he has heard so much about the orchestra.

Hochman has dozens of favorite pieces by Mozart but says he is, of course, engrossed in the one he'll play at Heinz Hall. "The emotional core is the slow movement, which is like a grand concert aria. I've heard so much about the individual players of the Pittsburgh Symphony, and how each can take on his or her own character as though onstage," he says.

The faster outer movements are "full of joy and simplicity. It's such a sunny and radiant piece. Here is a kind of simplicity that anyone could appreciate hearing it for the first or the hundredth time," Hochman says.

"There is nothing I would rather be doing than playing music of this kind."