Benjamin Grosvenor is top-notch veteran at 26

AT 26 English pianist Benjamin Grosvenor is already a seasoned veteran of the concert hall, having started in the business at the tender age of 11.

Benjamin Grosvenor gave a stunning concert at City Recital Hall Angel Place.

• A Spaniard in the works
• Home-spun words from David Wenham
• Angst for the memory
• Man with the golden Strad

AT 26 and with four top-notch Decca albums under his belt, English pianist Benjamin Grosvenor is already a seasoned veteran of the concert hall.

He was a mere 11 years old when he won the BBC’s Young Musician of the Year for keyboard and only had to wait another seven years to become the first British pianist since the 1950s to sign with the prestige record label.

A look at his discography shows that he likes a dance, whether it’s a Bach gigue, a Chopin mazurka or an Albeniz tango, and that he takes care to mix up a rich and varied palette of colours for his programs.

That was the case with his latest concert here at Angel Place for the Sydney Symphony recital series.

It started with the transparent hues of J.S. Bach’s French suite No. 5, a set of seven dances. The music proved perfect for Grosvenor’s natural and non-fussy approach. Each movement was gracefully shaped, and the sarabande, the third in the set, was a beautiful unfolding.

Grosvenor plays with great clarity and transparency. His touch is light and he also has a sense of fun, as in his playful phrasing in the Loure movement.

The joyful gigue finale was delivered with elan and some clever dynamic surges.

The light touch was also a prerequisite for Mozart’s Piano sonata No. 13 K333, as was his undoubted virtuosity and flair, for this is a work in which the composer lays out his pianistic stall.

CLIMATE

The bouncing allegro opening with its bravura passages was realised with superb control, both from the legato runs up and down the keyboard and subtle use of the pedals.

The singing slow movement built to an elegant and eloquent climax before the fireworks of the final allegretto grazioso with its concerto-like cadenza and “question and answer” moments, more usually found between soloist and orchestra in a larger work.

The climate changed from cool and airy in the first half to warm and occasionally humid in the second, with Chopin’s Barcarolle leading the way. Traditionally a gently swaying piece redolent of gondolas on Venetian canals, Chopin’s trip up the lagoon must have been accompanied by a stiff wind blowing in from the Adriatic as the whole eight minutes builds to a passionate climax.

Passion, tempered with some sardonic Spanish wit, is the template used by Enrique Granados in his Goyesca suite of piano pieces based on paintings by Francesco Goya.

Grosvenor gave us two of these vivid works, one about a flirtatious “maja” — or dandy’s woman — the other the set’s best-known piece, Quejas o La maja el ruisenor, in which a heartbroken maja shares her sorrows with a nightingale. Granados asked the pianist to play “with the jealousy of a wife, not the sadness of a widow”.

Grosvenor certainly managed that superbly.

But perhaps the best was saved for last in a stunning performance of Maurice Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit, three movements based on the Gothic poems of Aloysius Bertrand.

This is considered the most challenging of all Ravel’s piano works, from the extraordinary rippling water effects of Ondine to the ominous tolling B flat — sounded no less than 153 times — in the deathly slow The Gallows middle movement, through to the devilish quicksilver and menacing shifts of Scarbo.

It made a spectacular ending to Grosvenor’s well thought out and entertaining program.

DETAILS

● CONCERT: Benjamin Grosvenor in recital

● WHERE: City Recital Hall Angel Place

● WHEN: Monday, September 17