| Benjamin Grosvenor, the stellar 20-year-old pianist from Southend-on-sea, has won the Critics’ Choice award for his debut Decca CD at the Classic Brits this evening. Grosvenor faced tough competition, being nominated alongside the BBC Symphony Orchestra with B?lohlávek and Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic. Last week, Grosvenor won the Young Artist of the Year and the Instrumental Category at the Gramophone Awards making a total of 3 awards in six days.On 31 October, Benjamin will make his Southbank Centre recital debut following a thrilling year. Last year he became the youngest British musician ever to sign to the Decca label, and the first British pianist to join the label in almost sixty years. His second album Rhapsody in Blue was just released on Decca over the summer to rave reviews. Already this year Grosvenor was voted winner of an “Exceptional Young Talent” Award in the UK’s annual Critics’ Circle Music Awards.
“A champagne disc – fizz and finesse.” – BBC Music Magazine
His Gramophone and Classic Brit Award-winning debut CD was released to widespread critical acclaim in January 2012. BBC Music Magazine gave it five stars and called it a “stunning debut”, adding that “Grosvenor’s playing exudes joy and spontaneity, seeming to release rather than to interpret the music. … At 19, Grosvenor is already a pianist of uncommon distinction”. Classic FM Magazine declared, in another five-star review that “not since John Ogdon exploded onto the scene fifty years ago has Britain produced such an astonishing young pianistic talent as Benjamin Grosvenor.”
On 31 October 2012, Benjamin Grosvenor will make his Southbank Centre recital debut. He has chosen to explore dance themes in the piano repertoire from Bach to Granados. The concert begins with Bach’s Partita No.4 – a set of seven French dances for keyboard. The suite finishes with an enigmatic gigue in the unusual time signature of 9/16, before concluding with a three-part fugue. Grosvenor then moves to two of Chopin’s iconic polonaises – first the Tragic in F# Minor dedicated to Princess Ludmilla de Beauveau and then the Andante spianato and Grande Polonaise brillante in Eb Major. Grosvenor will perform a selection of Mazurkas and a Valse by Alexander Scriabin, a composer whose early work was heavily influenced by the music of Chopin, and will finish with Granados’ Valses poeticos and a virtuosic Concert arabesque based on themes from Johan Straus s’ ‘Blue Danube.’
Benjamin Grosvenor: Rhapsody in Blue
Saint-Saëns: Piano Concerto No. 2; “The Swan” (transcr. Godowsky)
Ravel:Piano Concerto in G major; Prelude in A minor
Gershwin:Rhapsody in Blue (original jazz band version, arr. Grofé); “Love Walked In” (transcr. Grainger)
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra/James Judd
Label: Decca Classics Cat No: 4783527
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