Benjamin returns to La Scala

This week Benjamin returned for his third appearance at Milan's La Scala, performing Ravel's Concerto in G with the Filarmonica della Scala and Manfred Honeck. This followed performances of the work this year with Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal and at the BBC Proms, in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the composer's birth Of his performance in Milan, Commenti Musicali noted:

'[the second movement revealed] a face of disarming and desolate greatness. The solo piano has unraveled an infinite melopea, a unique sentence, almost Eriksatian. The difficulty for Grosvenor was not technical, but emotional: to support this long melodic line without breaking it. The entrance of the English horn, which dueted with the piano, was one of the summits of Ravelian writing: two solitudes that spoke to each other. It was the best moment of the concert and the evening, splendidly resolved for the careful dosage of the sound balance and the formal growth of the sound.'