Profile: Pianist Benjamin Grosvenor
Signed to the Decca label in 2011, Benjamin Grosvenor delights audiences with a fluid style at the keyboard and a range of solo and orchestral recordings
Scala RadioLast updated 17th Feb 2021
When pianist Benjamin Grosvenor signed to classical music record label Decca in 2011, he was only 19 years of age – the youngest classical music artist to sign to the UK label.
He’d already won the BBC Young Musician of the Year Keyboard Final in 2004. Since then Grosvenor has developed his performance style, with a variety of radio and tv appearances, studying at the Royal Academy of Music.
Since debuting with the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 2011 when he was 19, Grosvenor has worked with a range of UK and international orchestras, releasing familiar works and popular classics.
Benjamin Grosvenor playing Rhapsody in Blue
One of Grosvenor’s early releases for Decca was the perennial jazz-infused favourite Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin accompanied by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by James Judd.
What this made this release particularly striking back in 2012 was the accompanying animated sequence – something unusual back then – combining a nostalgic 1920s vibe depicting a diminutive pianist performing the work of his dreams to his cat.
The animation projected the young pianist as playful, and stylish with an underplayed sense of sophistication that helped solidify Grosvenor’s reputation at the beginning of his career.
If you’re looking for something a little more intimate, end of a warm balmy night with the dregs of a bottle of red and maybe even the left overs of a cheese board, you might consider Grosvenor’s collection of music by Bach, Chopin, Scriabin and Granados.
Topping off the ravishing collection of solo pieces is a concert piece by Andrey Schulz-Ever based on Strauss’ Blue Danube Walz, the gentle but exquisite escape of Albeniz’s Tango.
Arguably Grosvenor trademark style is evident on his 2016 release – Homages. Listen out in the faster sequences of say the Mendelssohn Prelude in E minor for the effect created by his fingers passing at speed over the keyboard. Fluid, smooth and seemingly effortless. The kind of aural equivalent of touching a polished piece of marble.
Benjamin Grosvenor’s collaboration with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and up-and-coming conductor Elim Chan is the subject of his 2020 release.
A shift from the colourful flamboyance of his 2011 recording of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, his latest album includes both piano concertos by Chopin, both given an intimate feel, the second movement of the first concerto in particular. There’s a dance-like feel to the concluding movement of the second in particular that sits well with the ever-youthful air Grosvenor continues to create at the keyboard.
Grosvenor's forthcoming release (19 February 2021) is an epic solo recording centred around the works of the Romantic piano virtuoso and composer, Franz Liszt. "The music of Liszt has been central to my repertoire since I was introduced to it as a child, by my grandfather," said Grosvenor in an interview for his website, "I wanted with this recording to show the composer in his different aspects, including some of his original compositions, but also displaying the extraordinarily re-creative abilities he showed in his transcriptions."