Volume 21 Issue 2 - October 2015

Beat by Beat | Classical & Beyond
Grosvenor’s
Return
PAUL ENNIS
Jennifer Taylor has a knack for programming. Music Toronto’s
artistic producer and general manager admitted in a recent chat
that while she has “a tiny reputation for piano recital debuts,
just say that I am lucky.” We met in her office in an older building
high above the city’s downtown core. Glancing at the list of pianists
who have made their local debuts under Taylor’s watch over the last
25 years, many of the names jump out: Pascal Rogé, Misha Dichter,
Nikolai Lugansky, Markus Groh, Andreas Haefliger, Simon Trpčeski,
Piotr Anderszewski, Stephen Osborne, Arnaldo Cohen, Alexandre
Tharaud, Till Fellner, Peter Jablonski and Benjamin Grosvenor, who
returns to the stage of the Jane Mallett Theatre on October 13, a mere
19 months after his memorable debut there in 2014. Conceding that
she doesn’t usually gamble on pianists as young as Grosvenor, she
said: “He was the real thing.”
Grosvenor’s exceptional talent was widely revealed at 11 when
he won the keyboard section of the BBC Young Musician of the
Year. At 19, shortly after becoming the first British pianist since the
legendary Clifford Curzon to be signed by Decca, he became the
youngest soloist to perform at the First Night of the Proms. The venerable
magazine Gramophone bestowed its “Young Artist of the Year” on
him in 2012.
The youngest of five brothers, his piano-teacher mother shaped his
early musical thinking. He divulged in a 2011 YouTube video that he
decided at ten to be a concert pianist and wasn’t fazed at all by playing
on the BBC shortly thereafter. Only when he became more self-aware
at 13 or 14 did he suffer some anxious moments. An excerpt on the
piano of Leonard Bernstein’s Age of Anxiety followed, the musical
core of which he expressed beautifully, both literally and figuratively,
before adding, “The pieces you play the best are the ones you respond
to emotionally.”
Just a week after his appearance in the Last Night of the Proms at
Royal Albert Hall in London on September 12, the now 23-year-old
pianist took time out from his busy schedule to generously answer
several questions I sent him via email. Such a high profile concert
was just the latest in a career that has seen the spotlight shine on this
extraordinary performer for more than half of his life.
The WholeNote: Your recital in Toronto last year at the Jane Mallett
Benjamin Grosvenor
Theatre was a revelation. I was impressed by your sensitivity and tonal
palette; by the way you seemed to dig deep into the heart of each
piece. When I heard you play the Schubert Impromptu Op.90 No.3,
you reminded me of one of my favourite pianists, Dinu Lipatti. Has he
been an influence on you?
Benjamin Grosvenor: I admire a great many fellow pianists – both
alive and not – and Lipatti is one of them. With all great pianists, and
particularly with such pianists of the golden age, there is something
that is distinctive in all their performances, whether of Bach, Liszt
or Ravel, which is indelibly theirs – their own sound or ‘voice’ at the
piano. Lipatti and his interpretations remain ideals of technical and
musical perfection, but there are a great many other pianists whose
playing I admire for various distinct reasons – Horowitz, Moiseiwitsch,
Cherkassky, Schnabel, Bolet etc. They too all have their own ‘voices’
and touch me in different ways.
WN: I’d like to focus on the program for your upcoming Toronto
concert. Please tell me what attracts you to the Mendelssohn Preludes
and Fugues.
Grosvenor: The Mendelssohn pieces are underrated works, not very
often played. Each of the six in this set is masterfully constructed and
has emotional qualities of its own. All feature preludes with beautiful
melodic material – reminiscent of the Songs without Words – and
wonderfully constructed fugues, translating an archetypal baroque
form into Mendelssohn’s own language. The Fugue of the E minor is a
sombre work that builds in intensity as it processes. It bears a resemblance
to the Franck that comes later in the program, in that the
troubled quality in the music – softly spoken at first, later forcefully
uncompromising – is only resolved at the very end, with a triumphant
chorale, and a soothing coda in the major key. The Fugue of the F
minor takes the fugue to virtuosic heights, with a frenetic energy
LAURIE LEWIS
12 | Oct 1 - Nov 7, 2015 thewholenote.com