Review | British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor’s ‘Chopin and Liszt’ recital in Hong Kong brings the house down
- Acclaimed pianist Benjamin Grosvenor gave a tour de force of his technical arsenal performing works by Franz Liszt and Frederic Chopin at Hong Kong City Hall
- Warm, eerie and tenderly touching in turn, the young Briton’s playing gave the audience little time to catch their breath as he went quickly from piece to piece
When a recital programme includes two fiendishly demanding piano sonatas, you can expect the soloist to both have the technical chops and the musical stamina to pull it off.
Chopin spared the usual clichéd imagery of swaying Venetian gondolas in his Barcarolle in F sharp major, literally a “rowing boat song”, which he composed in ill health, just some three years before his death.
Grosvenor nonetheless conjured much warmth and wistfulness in the early undulations, and as soon as the writing increased in restlessness and floridity, the Royal Academy of Music graduate showed tremendous skill in spinning intertwining lines of ornamentation as effortlessly as could be and with plenty of bel canto operatic flair to boot.
Another hallmark of the 31-year-old pianist’s playing was the consistently thoughtful weighting and release of chords. This was no more evident than in Liszt’s all-encompassing Piano Sonata in B minor, where four movements are rolled into one compact yet highly demanding composition.
