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Review: Benjamin Grosvenor in Recital

Fresh verve matched with exceptional virtuosity.
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Benjamin Grosvenor. Photo by operaomnia.co.uk.

Young, multi-award-winning British concert pianist Benjamin Grosvenor is currently on a national tour, performing concertos with various orchestras and appearing in solo recital. On Monday night in Sydney he delivered a recital comprising Bach’s fifth French Suite in G major BWV 816, Mozart’s B flat Piano Sonata K333, Chopin’s imagined depiction of Venice, his Barcarolle Op 60, two of Granados’s decadent Goyescas and finally Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit, by any standard a summit of technical complexity.  The recital seemed designed to celebrate traditional fare in the first half while reserving an effusive display of colourful fireworks for the second. Some of you may have heard Grosvenor on his last visit to Australia in 2012 when he was just 20. He still looks like a doe-eyed youth.

Oddly, Grosvenor’s Bach was stylistically dated with smoothed-out and large-scaled phrasing decorated with unnecessary dynamic swelling and subsidence, intended presumably to provide rhetorical interest where none was needed nor wanted.  Save for these concerns, the Allemande remained elegant and buoyant with clearly articulated voicing and the Courante lively and sparkling, though rushed. The heart-rending Sarabande demonstrated a crystalline treble touch and was nicely shaped although it lacked the almost painful beauty of a superlative performance. The Gavotte charmed for its agreeable nature, though again sought superfluous expressive means where none was in fact required. The fleet Bourrée was efficiently conveyed though the lilting Loure lacked that sense of dignité heightened by its dotted rhythms and appoggiaturas. The Suite’s most famous Gigue was again marred by unnecessary haste and the imposition of further naïve dynamic manipulation.

The pianist was far more comfortable and expressive in Mozart’s virtuosic Sonata that resembles the classical refinement, transparency and delicacy of Meissen porcelain, though the opening Allegro needed more of a sense of ease and reserve, and was sometimes hurried. The poetic Andante cantabile was the highlight of the work with its sheer, magical tone colour and singing line. The ebullient Allegretto grazioso followed, articulating a transparency of texture.

Chopin’s imagined watery notion of Venice was written during one of the few happy times in his tragic life. The work was carried with grandeur and confidence. Here was a rare subtlety of touch and voicing that did not avoid weighty sonority when needed.  Spaniard Granados wrote his enchanting masterpiece the Goyescas in 1911, the work inspired by the paintings of Francisco Goya.  Grosvenor selected two works from the seven: Los requiebros (The Compliments) and Quejas, o La Maja y el ruiseñor (Complaint, or the Girl and the Nightingale). In both works, this luxuriously detailed writing spoke of a seductive allure and improvisatory elation, expertly conveyed.

But it was Ravel’s devilishly dark and ebullient Gaspard de la nuit written in 1908 that most impressed on this occasion.  Grosvenor commandingly managed the infamously difficult aquatic shimmering evoked by the seductive water-nymph Undine, avoiding any sense of the mechanical, while his voicing of the principal melody emulated enticing harp-plucked harmonics. There were exquisitely delayed and slow ascending glissandos in the subject’s aquatic realm. But by contrast the macabre and arid second movement Le gibet (The gallows), accompanied by distant sombrely tolling bells, was especially intense. Scarbo, its final movement, regarded as the most technically demanding work in standard repertoire requiring dazzling technique with its jolting and unpredictable goblin pirouettes, enchanted for its powerfully conveyed majestic sweep, with yet more energy kept in reserve to fully provide powerfully expressive peaks.

4 stars ★★★★

Benjamin Grosvenor in Recital
Presented by Sydney Symphony Orchestra

17 September 2018
City Recital Hall, Angel Place

 
 
David Barmby
About the Author
David Barmby is former head of artistic planning of Musica Viva Australia, director of music at St James' Anglican Church, King Street, artistic administrator of Bach 2000 (Melbourne Festival), the Australian National Academy of Music and Melbourne Recital Centre.