As pianophiles across the world are currently swept up in the piano tsunami that is the 19th Warsaw Chopin International Piano Competition (now in Stage 3, the final recital round before the final Concerto Round), it was a welcome change to hear British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor in recital at the Elisabeth Murdoch Hall that, although not entirely Chopin-free, nevertheless provided an alternative to the surfeit of Chopin-fare of recent weeks.
British pianist Grosvenor has managed to eschew the serious piano competition route that is the standard trajectory for most concert pianists. He did admittedly at the tender age of eleven win the keyboard section of the 2004 British Young Musician of the Year (our Australian equivalent, the ABC Young Performer of the Year, sadly appears to be in long-term hiatus at the moment), but since that momentous win and further study at the Royal Academy of Music in London, he has carefully crafted a well-managed and sustained performing career that includes performing in the world’s major concert halls with leading orchestras, notably as a frequent guest concerto soloist at the BBC Proms.
Grosvenor’s demeanour at the piano is an understated one, free from the extravagant arm gestures, corporeal gyrations and head-rolling of many other pianists. Almost throughout the entire program, save for a moment when he was briefly distracted by a fortissimo water bottle toppling over in the audience, Grosvenor’s eyes were exclusively fixed on the keyboard, the intensity of his musical focus palpable from first note to last.
The night’s program started with Chopin’s Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor. The opening movement, which featured a repeat of the opening exposition section (minus the four-bar Grave introduction) allowed Grosvenor to reveal the breadth of his tonal arsenal. A richly muscular tone characterised the tonal climaxes, while an expansive lyricism distinguished the more broadly-paced second subject. There was nothing playful or light-hearted about the ensuing Scherzo, which emerged with a sense of full-throttle energy and suitably rhetorical vigour. Yet, in the contrasting slower middle section Grosvenor’s poetic imagination and eloquence came to the fore. A highlight of the celebrated “funeral march” third movement was the central major-key section, a nocturne in all but name, where Grosvenor showed that he was not afraid to explore the coloristic possibilities of the una corda (“soft”) pedal to underline the unhurried fragility of the melodic contours.
Maurice Ravel’s piano triptych Gaspard de la Nuit, a tour de force masterpiece of the twentieth century, was inspired by Aloysius Bertrand’s posthumously published (1842) prose poem Gaspard de la Nuit. Its three movements Ondine, Le Gibet and Scarbo provide a kaleidoscopic entrée into the world of Impressionistic piano super-virtuosity. Grosvenor briskly-paced Ondine opened with a suitably diaphanous repeated-chord texture that evoked the gentle shimmering of Ondine’s water. Evocative crescendos and diminuendos, glissandos and half-pedalling effects summoned up washes of sound that so aptly characterise this, the most lyrical of the three movements. Grosvenor embraced perfectly the inexorable implacability of the rhythmic ostinato that permeates Le Gibet, all the while realising with a finely nuanced tonal palette the mesmerising despair of this most morbid of Bertrand’s poems. In Scarbo, Ravel set out to write a work whose difficulty rivalled Balakirev’s notoriously finger-breaking Islamey – and in that he succeeded. Here Grosvenor realised the demonic devilishness of Scarbo with intoxicating chordal tremolos, crystal-clear rapid-fire repeated notes, athletic note-accurate leaps, surging arpeggios that swiftly traverse the entire keyboard, and cataclysmic climaxes that shook the rafters before petering out somewhat unexpectedly in a wisp of translucent vapour.
After interval came a single programed work: the towering musical edifice that is Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Mussorgsky (1839-1881), one of the so-called Mighty Five, a group of Russian nationalist composers, was inspired by the 1874 Memorial Exhibition of a collection of paintings and drawings by his friend Victor Hartmann (1834-1873), who had died aged just 39. Grosvenor’s coruscating reading was especially notable for the richness of his sonority, especially from the bass register – I’m not sure I have heard such majestically sonorous chordal playing emanating from the MRC Steinway before, and seemingly so effortlessly. Even the varied Promenades, that link the individual movements as if meandering from one painting to the next, persuasively evoked the brass fanfares that are found in the numerous orchestrations of Pictures. Grosvenor’s deft pedalling – with its many shades of chiaroscuro-like half-pedalling effects – also contributed much to the orchestral-like colours that he elicited from the instrument. In the concluding movement, The Great Gate of Kiev, Grosvenor’s majestically cascading double octaves, implacable sense of rhythm, and thundering tremolo chords brought the work to an almighty conclusion, deservedly eliciting a standing ovation from the large audience.
An encore of Ravel’s genre-defining Jeux d’eau (1901) was played with finely nuanced tone colours and playful delicacy that perfectly evoked the laughing river-gods of Henri de Régnier’s poetic epigraph that superscribe Ravel’s score.
On a final note, the wonder of this magnificent recital would have been greatly enhanced had the MRC taken more trouble to provide informative program notes to patrons, who had paid not inconsiderable amounts to attend. At the very least, the individual names of movements for each of the three works is a sine qua non for concert programs. Cultivating and maintaining faithful, returning audience members is so important in an environment with so many competing attractions. Perhaps there was a pre-concert talk that I was not aware of. But background information about each of the works, and equally about the composers presented, is essential for a non-professional audience.
Photo supplied.
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Glenn Riddle reviewed the piano recital given by pianist Benjamin Grosvenor, presented by the Melbourne Recital Centre at the Elisabeth Murdoch Hall on October 14, 2025.
