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Stories   >   Benjamin Grosvenor at London's Wigmore Hall. Virtuosity preferences power over pastel colours / The Guardian

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Benjamin Grosvenor at London's Wigmore Hall. Virtuosity preferences power over pastel colours / The Guardian

Posted: May 8, 2023

British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor is internationally recognized for his sonorous lyricism and understated brilliance at the keyboard. His virtuosic interpretations are underpinned by a unique balance of technical mastery and intense musicality. Grosvenor has been heralded one of the most important pianists to emerge from the UK in several decades.

His 22/23 season begins with Prokofiev‘s Piano Concerto no.3 with RSO Wien conducted by Marin Alsop at the BBC Proms. He is ’Artist in Focus’ at The Sage Gateshead, and performs three projects across the season with the Philharmonia Orchestra, including both Chopin Piano Concerti and Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with Sheku Kanneh-Mason and Nicola Benedetti.

Other concerto highlights of the 22/23 season include engagements with KBS Symphony and Mo. Chung (Chopin 1), touring with the London Philharmonic and their Chief Conductor Edward Gardner, Orchestra of St Luke’s at Carnegie Hall (Mendelssohn 1), Auckland Philharmonia, Prague Radio, Bern, San Diego and City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestras, Hallé Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Orchestre de Lyon with Leonard Slatkin.?

In recital, Grosvenor makes his debut at the Luxembourg Philharmonie, in Mainz as part of the SWR2 Internationale Pianisten series and Oldenburg. He also returns to the Théâtre des Champs Elysées, Wigmore Hall, Sage Gateshead, Kennedy Centre, Washington and embarks on a tour of Latin America including returns to Sao Paolo and Montevideo. A keen chamber musician, regular collaborators include Hyeyoon Park, Timothy Ridout, Kian Soltani – whom he appears with at Cologne Philharmonie, and the Doric String Quartet with whom he tours the USA in Spring 2023.

Highlights of recent seasons include debuts with the Chicago Symphony conducted by Paavo Järvi and Scottish Chamber Orchestra conducted by Maxim Emelyanychev, varied projects as Artist in Residence at the Wigmore Hall in the 21/22 season and at Radio France in 20/21. A renowned interpreter of Chopin, he has performed at the ‘Chopin and his Europe’ Festival in Warsaw, Montpellier Festival, Barbican Centre, Southbank Centre, Spivey Hall, Washington’s Kennedy Center, New York’s Carnegie Hall and 92nd Street Y.


An ambitious programme that ranged from Busoni’s Bach to Prokofiev confirmed why the pianist is a favourite
 

The Guardian's Andrew Clements writes….Judging from the near-capacity audience for his recital, and the enthusiastic reception for it, Benjamin Grosvenor is now firmly established as one of Wigmore Hall’s favourites. His latest programme – works by Busoni, Schumann, Ravel and Prokofiev – contained none of the virtuoso showpieces that used to be such a regular feature of his recitals, though there were still plenty of technical challenges of the kind that he takes in his stride. 

Le Tombeau de Couperin was perhaps the nearest thing to purely decorative music in the selection, though Grosvenor’s take on Ravel’s piano music is never as pastel-coloured and exquisite as it’s sometimes presented, but something much more sinewy and direct, even in these exercises in nostalgia. He would return to Ravel for his encore, too, with Jeux d’Eau, in a performance that owed as much to Liszt as it did to any notion of musical impressionism. 

But a first half of Busoni’s transcription of the great Chaconne from Bach’s D minor violin Partita, and Schumann’s C major Fantasie Op 17 was powerful stuff. The Chaconne was a tremendous opener, given a performance of immense muscularity and power that swept all before it, and that intensity was carried over into the Fantasie. That work needs a bit more than sheer power though, and at times Grosvenor’s reading would sometimes have benefited from more transparent textures and a less assertive bass and even a little more affection in its lyrical interludes, while the treacherous closing pages of the central march were not quite as immaculate as one might have expected from such a technically gifted pianist. 

But Prokofiev’s Seventh Sonata, the central panel in his wartime sonata triptych, received exactly the fierce, driven performance it demands, only pausing for breath in the slow movement, with its allusions to a song from Schumann’s Op 39 Liederkreis, and Grosvenor’s virtuosity didn’t miss anything in the final, tumultuous toccata.
 

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