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Stories   >   Benjamin Grosvenor - Schumann & Brahms. An old head on young fingers / LIMELIGHT

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Benjamin Grosvenor - Schumann & Brahms. An old head on young fingers / LIMELIGHT

Posted: March 24, 2023

The acclaimed British pianist, Benjamin Grosvenor, still only 30 and yet a well-established favourite of critics and audiences around the globe, takes Robert Schumann’s haunting Kreisleriana as his starting point in his new album, Schumann & Brahms. This eight-movement work portrays the mercurial personality of the fictional Johannes Kreisler, created by E. T. A. Hoffmann: Kreisler’s highs and lows, and his dreamy nature, clearly mirror Schumann’s own tragic manic-depressive tendencies. Grosvenor responds to the composer’s autobiographical honesty with playing of sublime tenderness, dazzling variety, and imaginative empathy.

He accompanies the work with the melancholic Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann by Schumann’s beloved wife Clara (who, incidentally, stated that she was much disturbed by the visions conjured up in Kreisleriana). Further kaleidoscopic variety is provided by Robert’s Blumenstück, and Quasi Variazione: Andantino de Clara Wieck. The recital also includes Brahms’ Three Intermezzi, autumnal works which shed a fascinating light on the complicated relationship which existed between Robert, Clara and Brahms himself. Grosvenor’s own arrangement of Robert’s Abendlied completes the programme.

The recording is Benjamin Grosvenor’s seventh for Decca since 2011, when he became the youngest musician - and also the first British pianist in more than sixty years - to sign to the label. Since then he has won inter alia several Gramophone Awards, and the prestigious Diapason d’Or de l’année. After a spectacular win, at the age of just 11, in the keyboard section of the BBC Young Musician competition, he went on to become the youngest soloist ever to appear at the opening night of the BBC Proms in 2011.


LIMELIGHT's Phillip Scott writes….Sixteen years ago, a friend gave me a private CD of a teenage English pianist. His name was Benjamin Grosvenor, and he played flashy works by Kapustin (the jazzy Russian composer). His technique was unbelievable; his playing overflowed with youthful exuberance and speed. Many such talented young musicians appear regularly, but there was something more, which became clear when I read an interview with him.

Grosvenor is deeply influenced by the great pianists of the Golden Age – that is, those who recorded in the first half of the 20th century. Decca immediately signed the young pianist to a contract, and his first recordings made a big impact. I felt he was not yet mature as an artist; his recording of the Ravel Piano Concerto was lightweight and rushed, more dazzling than musically satisfying. He has now been concertising for well over a decade, and has reached the age of 30, so this new release is a good place to take stock of his progress.

Schumann’s piano music requires a formidable technique to separate the various strains of the texture, to give a lilt to the lyricism, a lightness to the many skipping rhythms, and above all to characterise the extrovert and introvert aspects of his music, which are often bluntly juxtaposed. It is here that the influence of the Golden Age informs Grosvenor’s playing: he ensures that Schumann’s rippling scales and arpeggios flow; he gives an ethereal quality to soft passages (such as the middle section of the first piece in Kreisleriana, Op. 16), and in the seventh piece, Sehr rasch, his balance between the vigorous opening and the gentle closing chorale is beautifully judged. More than other contemporary pianists who have recorded this work, he indulges in rubato in the Romantic slow movements. Some may think he is too interventionist, but I find him genuine and compelling.

Composed in 1838 and revised in 1850, Kreisleriana was based on a series of stories about a wandering musician (something of a musical Till Eulenspiegel) by E. T. A. Hoffmann. I compared two other recordings: Alfred Brendel, and Maurizio Pollini. The latter is, as expected, very strong in the stormy sections and chiselled in the lyrical music. Brendel is more characterful; he is concerned with Schumann’s inspiration and finds mischief in the fast movements. Of the three, Grosvenor sounds most like a grand pianist, shaping and colouring the music to present it to us in a polished setting.

He plays the third movement of Schumann’s Piano Sonata No 3, a set of variations on a theme by the composer’s fiancée Clara Weick, followed by Clara’s own set of variations on a theme by Robert. Frankly, both her theme (lovingly developed by Robert) and her variations indicate that she primarily belongs in this grouping for historical reasons. The link is Brahms: Grosvenor closes with his late Intermezzi. Op. 117, described by Hanslick as “monologues”, and composed in 1892, over 40 years after Schumann’s death. This is the most introspective music in the program, and Grosvenor again displays the warm tone and supple shaping of an older generation. Altogether, a very fine release. 

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