This Friday, Benjamin Grosvenor makes his recital debut at the Lucerne Symphony Piano Festival ‘Le Piano Symphonique’ with his programme including a World Premiere by Brett Dean.
Now in its second year - and with a newly appointed Associate Pianist Martha Argerich - this year’s Festival focusses on the composer Franz Liszt. Benjamin performs Liszt and Chopin’s B minor sonatas, as well as ‘Faustian Pact’ – the World Premiere by Australian composer Brett Dean, which as Dean himself writes ‘pays homage to this marvellous inventive mind in a brief musical argument that touches on Liszt’s harmonic quirkiness and originality as well as his daringly phosphorescent pianism and surprising moments of mystical reflection’.
This co-commission by the 2023 Ivors Classical Awards winning composer will also receive US and UK premieres by Benjamin later this Spring: at Chicago Symphony Centre (10 March) and London’s Wigmore Hall (20 April). You can read more about the new work here: Brett Dean - Faustian Pact (Hommage à Liszt) (boosey.com)
Following the Lucerne Piano Festival, Benjamin looks forward to further notable collaborations with the piano concerto of another celebrated piano virtuoso, Ferruccio Busoni, in the year marking 100 years since his death, including with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra (1 Feb), and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin conducted by Robin Ticciati (23, 24 February).