News
- 'This and That' Benjamin's 2008 recording for the Bowers and Wilkins online music club has been reviewed by Tim Parry in the Jan/Feb edition of the International Piano Magazine.
'Throughout Grosvenor plays with awesome control, yet there is nothing schooled about his playing. Repeated notes can shimmer or fire like a machine gun; sonorities range from the carressingly impressionistic to full-throated quasi-orchestral; and he knows when to take his time and when to push the music at full throttle. Indeed, it is hard to know which is the more startling in a pianist still in his mid-teens: the all-encompassing mastery of technique, or the flair and maturity of imagination. He really is a rare talent.' Tim Parry.
'This and That ' is now available as a CD via this website or from http://www.amazon.co.uk/
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Benjamin's November 2009 performances of the Beethoven Third Concerto in Finland were greeted with great praise. "Wunderkind dives straight to the heart of the Music", declared the headline of the review in the Helsingin Sanomat, continuing "The name of 17-year-old Benjamin Grosvenor, who well merits the title of Wunderkind, tends on the whole to feature only in the concert calendars of the world's best-known orchestras... this young man with the air of a sensitive, poetic lad, makes the substance, the heart, the meaning of the music simply flow from the piano. Just when you think you have heard the most delicately glittering note, the pianist plays some more: even clearer, more delicate. Never before has the meaning of the Largo been more obvious. The cadenzas in the Allegro con brio and Rondo sparkled with animated brilliance."
- Benjamin's Irish debut with the Ulster Orchestra received critical and audience acclaim, with the Irish Times commenting that "he brought real freshness to the Grieg, from the impetuous opening to the soulfulness of the slow movement to the sparky finale." (See the Reviews section for urls for the complete reviews.)
- Benjamin's sold-out Royal Festival Hall debut in the Grieg Concerto with the Philharmonia under Alexander Lazarev was greeted rapturously by audience and critics: "The dash and vim of the finale capped a performance that took its expressive and dramatic cues from the very heart of the music, and in so doing crafted an interpretation of palpable character and astute panache",wrote Geoffrey Norris in the Daily Telegraph. Classicalsource.com noted that"Grosvenor displayed a virtuoso combination of subtle agility and muscular strength producing poetic lyricism juxtaposed with drama." (See the Reviews section for urls for the complete reviews.)
Benjamin is managed by 