Benjamin Grosvenor makes his long-awaited debut with Scottish Chamber Orchestra last week performing Liszt’s Piano Concerto No.1 under the baton of Maxim Emelyanychev. With concerts at Usher Hall (Edinburgh), City Halls (Glasgow) and Aberdeen Music Hall, his performance has already been earning rave reviews.
"Emeyanychev matched power and precision throughout, with brisk tempos and stark dynamic contrasts – an energy and vividness he continued in the Liszt First Piano Concerto that followed. The SCO was on gripping form, but soloist Benjamin Grosvenor was more than a match in terms of sheer pianistic power and definition, also playing up the piece’s rhapsodic unpredictability to beguiling effect ... it was an evening of revelations." - The Scotsman, February 2022 **** "[Grosvenor and Emelyanychev] made the concerto sing. Most of their success came from a brilliant study of contrasts. The hammer-like opening sounded surprisingly weighty from a chamber orchestra, and Grosvenor answered it with fistfuls of muscular octaves; but almost immediately the music slipped into something altogether more tender and intimate, the piano singing gently alongside the orchestral soloists in a way that brought out the music’s unusual lyricism. The second section sounded impossibly dreamy, and the finale was part triumphal march and part jolly holiday. Liszt sceptics take note: this is music of passion and poetry when it is played under the right hands." - Seen and Heard International, February 2022 BBC Radio Scotland interviewed Benjamin prior to his performances for their Classics Unwrapped series, in which he discussed his Scottish tour. Listen again here. Benjamin also spoke to Keith Bruce of Vox Carnyx. Read the interview here.