Chopin Liszt Ravel

Product Description Decca Classics is proud to present the Decca debut of 19 year old British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor, who has been described as one in a million several million (The Independent) and a keyboard visionary who knows no bounds (Süddeutsche Zeitung). Signing an exclusive contract, Benjamin became the first British pianist to sign to Decca in nearly 60 years, since Clifford Curzon and Moura Lympany first graced the label in the 1940s and 50s The new album was released in the UK to rapturous reviews, coinciding with Benjamin Grosvenor s performance of the Liszt Piano Concerto No.2 at the First Night of the BBC Proms, where he thrilled the audience in the hall, on radio and BBCTV and again broke a record, becoming the youngest First Night soloist the Proms has ever seen. He returned later in this season s Proms to perform Britten s Piano Concerto The album is a personal and carefully-programmed choice of virtuoso solo piano music, built around Chopin s Four Scherzi and Ravel s Gaspard de la Nuit, and including Chopin Nocturnes and shorter pieces by Liszt sequenced to trace the development of pianistic virtuosity through these three great masters Benjamin Grosvenor first rose to prominence when he won the piano section of the BBC Young Musician of the Year 2004 at the age of just 11 the youngest ever finalist in the competition. Shortly afterwards he made his debuts at the Royal Albert Hall and Carnegie Hall, New York and has continued to develop an international presence in Europe, Asia and the USA, working with some of the world s finest orchestras and conductors including Vladimir Jurowski and Decca artist Vladimir Ashkenazy Benjamin is currently concluding his studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London and is a BBC Radio 3 'New Generation' Artist Review 'That boy seems to have a sonic variety of liquid gold in his fingers. He's a natural romantic, sensing exactly how to shape an ecstatic arc and pace a rubato.' --The Independent, 2011 The first thing you notice is the limpid surface of Grosvenor s playing, the warm tonal gleam that he conjures up from the keys. It is a beautiful sound, and beneath it there are seams of passion, discretion and emotional affinity with the music... there is little to quibble with in this recital, which shows intelligence coupled with a command of keyboard colour and musical characterisation that