A Conversation with Benjamin Grosvenor

Vantage Music | September 2023 | Hong Kong

British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor, known for his brilliance and lyricism, is recognised by Gramophone as among the top 50 pianists ever on record. Grosvenor’s 23/24 season includes debuts with DSO Berlin and Iceland Symphony Orchestra, featuring Busoni’s Piano Concerto. His diverse repertoire spans Prokofiev, Mendelssohn and more, with appearances at prestigious venues like Wigmore Hall and the Bridgewater Hall. Grosvenor, a seasoned chamber musician, has embarked on Japanese and European tours, with recent debuts with the Chicago Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra and RSO Wien. Grosvenor, an acclaimed Chopin interpreter, performed both concerti with the Philharmonia Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall in the 22/23 season. His extensive recital history includes performances at renowned venues such as Konzerthaus Berlin, Warsaw’s “Chopin and His Europe” Festival, the Barbican Centre and Carnegie Hall.

Vantage had the opportunity to catch up with Benjamin in late September 2023, the day before his concert at Hong Kong City Hall, where he performed a Chopin and Liszt programme.

VM: Would you like to share with us your first musical impressions?

BG: My mother is a piano teacher and I’m the youngest of five brothers and we all learnt an instrument:  I don’t really remember why I chose the piano, perhaps because my mother was teaching on it, so I was immersed in the sound. I started learning aged five and learnt to read music quite quickly.

I confess to not being terribly interested at first… I think about the age of six, I started to practise a little more, and then got very quickly better: when I could play real pieces of music like Mozart and Chopin, that’s when I really got very serious with the piano.

VM: Which other instruments do your brothers play?

BG: They all stopped when they were teenagers. One played the trumpet, another one played violin, and another the clarinet, so it was quite varied. But they all stopped early in their mid-teens and I was the only one who kept going. I’m the only one who’s a musician.

VM: Where did the motivation come from for you to become serious as a musician?

BG: As I mentioned, I wasn’t very interested at first. I think some friends at school started playing, and I was nervous they might get better than me. I practised a little bit more and then I could play Chopin – he was really the first composer I really connected with.

I was self-motivated to practise. I still remember that Chopin’s Waltz in A flat was one of the first pieces I played that I think really opened up the world of music to me.

I also play the cello. I remember why I started playing the cello. I heard Jacqueline Dupré playing the Elgar concerto, and I thought to myself, I must know how to play this instrument. I don’t actually have that memory with the piano, but with the cello I remember why I played it. But I only played it for a few years, and then it was clear that the piano was my thing.

I found it a little frustrating to play the cello when I was better at the piano, because when you can play the piano well then you can play the whole fabric of the music – whereas in the cello you only play a single line.

VM: Do you still remember your first live stage performance?

BG: My first performances were in local music festivals, but they were little competitions and they’d have classes. There’d be a Mozart class, or a set piece class where every child plays the same piece. I was around seven or eight, and I guess they were my first experiences of playing in public.

VM: Where was that?

BG: It was in my hometown, in Essex, England. Then I started playing a little more publicly. I got my first full concert when I was 10 in a local church.

VM: Do you still remember which pieces you played?

BG: Well, I actually played the cello for one half and the piano for the other half. There are also other local competitions. I’m from a town called Southend. I did the Southend Young Musician and then the Essex Young Musician, and then, because of my success in the local festivals, I did this competition in London, which was lots of winners from the local festivals coming together.

VM: Was that the final stage of the competition where then you get to play in a solo recital?

BG: No, the solo recital was just something we organised. I don’t remember a first performing experience, but I had bits from about the age of eight. When I was 10, I entered the BBC Young Musician, which is a national competition, and I got to the final of that. The last rounds were on television. So that’s really my first memorable performing experience because, when I entered that competition, then I was playing in proper halls on very, very good pianos and having to come to terms with playing for live television.

VM: You played a Ravel concerto in the final round? Do you remember the preliminary rounds? What did you play?

BG: It’s a distant memory: I think I played a Haydn sonata, some Chopin, for sure, and Beethoven.

VM: Before the BBC Young Musician, you didn’t really have much chance to try other competitions?

BG: I did. I also performed every week for only for a short time. There was a local restaurant where I’d go and play my repertoire every week on a Sunday. That was when I was maybe nine. I also played before the concert in the foyer of the auditorium. So, I was just getting bits and pieces of performing experience here and there.

VM: And you already knew that you like it a lot, and that it was something you were going to pursue in the long run? Were you already at the Royal Academy of Music at that time?

BG: Well, when I was nine, my mother sent a videotape to Christopher Elton and Hilary Coates, and already then Hilary started teaching me. And when I entered the BBC Young Musician, I moved to Christopher. I worked with him for a very long time. When I started studying with him, he was head of keyboard at the academy, so I started going into the academy for lessons.

I didn’t do junior academy, but I was going to the building to have private lessons with Christopher. When I was 13, I started having some academic lessons with other people as well.

VM: Since you mentioned Christopher, you studied with Daniel-Ben Pienaar as well? How did these two masters shape you as a musician?

BG: I was taught by Chris for so long, it’s sort of hard to say. He was guiding me for many years. He’s the kind of teacher who’s not very dogmatic but is very good at allowing the student to find their own way and gently guiding them. You couldn’t say that he’s teaching a particular ‘school’. It’s not a rigid way of teaching but it’s a way of teaching where you explore what the student can do and what their abilities are.

With Daniel-Ben, it was quite different. He wasn’t strictly my piano teacher, although I did play to him sometimes. He’s a very unconventional musician, an extremely intelligent man but quite quirky. We would talk about music a lot and listen to recordings. He was teaching various academic electives, so I would do bits and pieces of that and the lessons. We would talk about Schubert sonatas or Beethoven sonatas, and I’d get some of the stuff that he was doing with university students at the time. But I think probably the most interesting aspect to it was listening to recordings and just talking about the kind of aspects to the interpretations and aesthetics.

VM: Do you still recall any fond memories at the academy? You were there for all four years, right? Did you spend most of your time there?

BG: I wasn’t living in London, so I was coming up a few days a week for lessons there. It was great when I started the degree because until that point I was having individual lessons. One of the most fulfilling things was just meeting other musicians and being surrounded by people who are doing the same thing as me. I met lots of great people there. It was also just having access to that broad music education and not just learning how to be better at the piano but all the other classes, like history of music. I love doing the analytical stuff and writing essays.

VM: Did you play a lot of chamber music?

BG: Yes, I played some when I was studying at the academy, but I was also playing professionally as well. Chamber music has become a big part of my musical life so I play quite a lot. I was just in Japan the last few weeks touring with the Modigliani Quartet.

VM: Yes, I noticed on your Facebook page. And were you working with some actors as well?

BG: Well, the solo violinist [Sayaka Shoji] is very interested in cross-disciplinary stuff, and she’s worked with dancers and visual artists. She approached a theatre director in Tohoku in Japan to write a play to go between the movements of the Chausson Concerto for piano, violin, and string quartet.

There was quite a free rein as to what it would be about, but somehow it would follow the emotional current of the piece of music. It turned out to be a kind of realist play. It was three friends who’ve known each other for a long time talking with each other, and one of the women, her husband died two years ago, and it’s the first year of his death. And they’re just talking about life. It was between the movements.

There’s three parts of the play in between the four movements. Obviously, it’s all in Japanese so I didn’t understand it, but the story was explained to me. We did that for three other concerts.

VM: Was it translated into English?

BG: Well, it was very Japan-specific, perhaps because what touched the audience most in the play was that it was set in Tohoku and there’s all these aspects of how they grew up in this small town, and then they go to Tokyo, and then they’ve come back again, and how it’s changed.

It was done with a lot of commitment and you could tell they were communicating something. I’ve never read a translation in English. The concept could be replicated and you could do it for any piece of music. You could do it for a more standard repertoire, which I would say might have more appeal. You could do Brahms piano quintets or something like that. It’s an interesting idea and the audiences really responded to it.

VM: You will be playing both the Liszt and Chopin sonatas in the concert. Has it been something that you’ve wanted to do, or have you been performing a similar programme with both sonatas in the same concert?

BG: I was doing a similar programme at the end of 2021. There was this one promoter in Paris who I’m playing for twice this season. She had a Chopin and Liszt theme, so my season’s become a little bit revolving around her because she had these very particular wishes, but obviously I could have played any Chopin or Liszt, but I like the idea of these two sonatas together. They complement each other very well, obviously sharing a key.

VM: How do you feel about playing two such huge works in a concert?

BG: Well, I’ve always played quite big programmes, but it’s challenging for sure. I like the challenge.

VM: I’ve browsed through your albums. You’ve recorded quite a lot of Liszt and Chopin. How do you retain individuality and respect the composer’s intentions at the same time?

BG: You can’t force individuality and you can’t have it as a primary goal. You should set out to be unique or to be different. So, everything I do is in response to my reading of the text and you hope that in the end you will do something that’s individual. But I don’t think that should be your goal. It’s about understanding the composer’s intentions and analysing the score.

VM: In your opinion, what’s the role of an interpreter?

BG: To bring music to life, I suppose. I mean, it doesn’t exist without us, really. Within the parameters of what’s on the page, there’s so much you can do.

I respect all the markings in the score, but I also like spontaneity, especially in romantic music, there’s lots of different interpretations. You have to respect the framework, and the interpreting is always a question of small scale or large scale. If you’re playing a piece like a Liszt sonata or Schumann sonata, you’re dealing with the phrase, this paragraph, and then the movement, and then the whole. So, you have to navigate all these things and you can’t be too wilful; you have to see the bigger picture.

But at the same time you have to find the spontaneity and the shades and the colours and all the small-scale things. There’s great creativity in that process of getting that eventual whole.

There can be freedom. In the moment you might do something that’s not necessarily exactly what the composer writes on the page, but that’s that moment. And the next time you might do it a different way. I think you have to have that kind of spontaneity sometimes, but it doesn’t work with every passage of music so you also have to understand the context of everything you’re doing because everything has a consequence. For instance, you do a crescendo here and there’s an effect for that and it affects the next passage of music. It’s constantly juggling between the small scale and the large scale.

VM: As a performer, do you find that there’s a gap between what you can realise musically onstage and offstage? Is there something that you can find only onstage, but not offstage?

BG: Certainly, the presence of an audience and the atmosphere of the occasion, the acoustics, the pianos all add something to the performance. Sometimes, in the moments in the performance, you discover things. Different pianos are so interesting because each one has its own qualities, and there are things that you can discover like the different colours that you can get in one instrument that you can’t find in another. That experience of always being at a different setting is conducive to exploration. You always discover new things.

VM: Especially as a pianist, you always get different pianos.

BG: Yes, that’s true. Every piano has its good sides and limitations and probably not really a perfect instrument. You have to make the most of it to create the best from every piano that you’re presented with.

VM: What do you hope to see in an audience in general?

BG: Well, it’s hard to generalise. They’re different everywhere. Every city has a different crowd, the sort of national characteristics, I suppose. Just having been to Japan, I must say that the audience there is so incredibly attentive. It’s sort of like they make almost no noise during the concert. Since the pandemic, they don’t even shout “Bravo” anymore. They hold signs instead.

VM: What’s the reason?

BG: They’re self-conscious about Covid and infecting people by shouting. I think it started because there was actually a rule. They were told that, at least in the past few years, they couldn’t vocalise during concerts. It seems like they’ve continued that after the pandemic.

VM: Do they say “boo”?

BG: Well, that’s what I was wondering. Everything’s got two sides to it so, on the other side, what if you don’t like the content?

VM: You’ve worked with so many conductors. Are there any interesting incidents that you’d like to share with us?

BG: Well, you have good and bad experiences because there’s so many different characters that are put together. It’s like working with any other musician, really, but conductors can be a kind of special breed. Most of my experiences are wholly positive. The ones that maybe haven’t been, I could probably count on one hand. Most people in the business are kind and generous, and they really want to make music happen. But you have to be prepared sometimes, as with chamber music you have to be prepared to compromise on occasions. Very independent artists are coming together to make music, and you have to stay flexible. I think that’s important. It’s something you learn by playing a lot of chamber music.

VM: How do you choose your chamber partner?

BG: Well, sometimes you get thrown together and then it works. For example, I have a piano quartet and we tour once a year. It sort of all came together by accident in a way, because in 2018 I was asked to do a chamber concert at the Southbank because they were reopening the Queen Elizabeth Hall after renovation.

When it opened, there was that famous “The Trout” concert with Barenboim and Dupré and so the idea was sort of recreating that. I liked the idea of the fact that it was a concert for the reopening of the whole tour, but also it being an intergenerational thing. So, I invited some young musicians and Brett Dean, the violist and a fabulous composer as well, but he had to cancel at the last minute because his mother sadly passed away and he had to go back to Australia. But then Timothy Ridout replaced him and we did the track. We also played piano quartets with Hyeyoon Park, who’s my wife. We’ve been duo partners for about 10 years. There are also Timothy Ridout and Kian Soltani. We played together and it just worked really well. So that started the piano quartet that we now tour with once a year.

VM: How did you meet your wife?

BG: We met playing duos together, and it has always worked musically from the beginning. It’s a very fulfilling partnership. And then I played with quartets like with this tour, the Modigliani and Doric Quartet, who I think are wonderful. I worked with them many times. So, I have a few relationships like that. Chamber festivals are a good place to meet people. I play in those now and then, and that’s where you find new and interesting partnerships, sort of sometimes just being thrown together with people. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. I suppose you have to make it work for that concert, but then you find the partnerships that are really going to be long-term.

VM: Have you had any bizarre experiences onstage over the years?

BG: I haven’t had enough bizarre experiences onstage! There’s the odd medical incident, not particularly amusing but it can be quite dramatic. A double bass player fainted in a concert so that was quite dramatic. He was quite a tall guy, but also the double bass falling at the same time.

VM: Where did that happen?

BG: It was in America. It was maybe five years ago or something. He’d been playing golf all day and he’d also been for a cycle ride and obviously was pretty dehydrated and so he fainted.

VM: So how did you react? Was the concert terminated straightaway?

BG: Some of the orchestra members were a bit spooked and they didn’t want to keep playing the piece. I think it was in the second movement, but I think the conductor convinced them that we’d have a break and then come on again and do the last movement.

VM: You have a very busy schedule. How do you juggle practising if you want to try new repertoire? How much time can you commit?

BG: You just find the time when you can. There are periods in the year where I don’t schedule concerts so I can learn repertoire. It really depends. I’m here in Hong Kong. I’ve been here for a couple of days, and I’ve got access to the piano. By contrast, in the Japan tour, we were travelling from one place to another. You knew that when you’ve arrived, you’re going to be tired, but you’ve got three hours on the piano, and so you just have to go and do your practice, and then you can rest. So, it takes some motivation sometimes, but you have to make it work.

VM: How about when you were young? Were you very disciplined?

BG: Yeah, I think I was always very disciplined.

VM: So, no one pushed you to practise?

BG: No. I mean, as soon as you have performances that you are working towards, then you’re motivated because you want to play at your best.

VM: Among all your albums and I noticed that you have several albums. Liszt, the latest album, and the Chopin concerto, and Dances. Which one is your favourite and which one would you recommend?

BG: Well, my last one is Schumann and Brahms, Kreisleriana and Brahms, op. 117. I quite like the concept of that one and what the Schumann Kreisleriana and Brahms had in common. The Schumann was basically written for Clara. He talked about it almost being about her and their life together, and he wanted to dedicate it to her, but at the time there was a problem with her father, and so he dedicated it to Chopin instead.

Brahms op. 117 came 50 or 60 years later and the first person he sends it to is Clara. So, it’s this connection over many decades with these two amazing figures. Well, there’s another amazing musical figure, Clara Schumann. So, it draws on those and then in between those two pieces, you have a number of smaller works, and there are these two sets of variations, or the one by Robert is from his Third Sonata, but it’s a very fresh set of variations on a theme by Clara.

And then she also wrote a set of variations on a theme by Robert. They were both published in the year that Brahms turned up on their doorstep. The Clara Schumann variations is based on the same theme by Robert that Brahms then uses for his variations a year later. The album draws on the interconnectedness of these three figures.

VM: Do you work with any living composers at all?

BG: I mentioned Brett Dean earlier. This year I’m doing a number of his pieces. I’ve commissioned a work from him as well. So, he’s written a series of etudes in homage to other composers. Previously I played his homage to Brahms, which are three pieces that you intersperse between Brahms’s four pieces, op. 119. For one season I toured with that and it worked really nicely. Next year, I’m doing all of his homage etudes at Wigmore Hall, but I commissioned a final one from him, which is a homage to Liszt. So, in the new year, I’m playing that alongside the Sonata.

VM: Did Brett write for you? Did you discuss with him?

BG: Well, he had asked me to do the homage etudes concert and I agreed to do that. And I said, “Would you like to do one more?” I happened to be playing a lot of Liszt this season, and so I just said to him, “Would you be interested in writing one for Liszt?” And he was and he’s done it. It’s a fabulous piece. I’m playing that in a few places next year, so that came about really nicely. The promoters helped with the commission I was playing for anyway so it was easy to schedule it.

VM: What was the experience like working together? Does Brett change things when you premiere his works? Do you two discuss together over interpretation?

BG: Yes, I’m going to meet with him next month. I’ve got my fingers around the piece a little bit and then we’ll talk over things. I know he’s not completely set on some of the pedal markings, and obviously he wants to publish it and wants to make that firm so he wants my advice on that.

VM: So, you also have a lot of input on that?

BG: Yes, there will be a bit of that in terms of some of the performance markings. I guess, maybe in particular the pedalling, if he wants to be specific he might ask my advice because he’s not a pianist. But the essence of the piece is fixed so I have no comments on the composition.

VM: Is it an ongoing partnership? Are there any future projects?

BG: There’s nothing planned at the moment. I hope I will continue to play his pieces in future seasons as well, particularly the one that was written for me. I’m sure I’ll come back to it again.

VM: How satisfied are you with the life of an artist overall? Are you happy?

BG: Yes, I’m happy with what I do. Like any job, it has good sides and bad sides, but generally it’s a hugely fulfilling thing to do. The travelling can be great sometimes, and it can be tough at other times. It’s a very demanding thing to do, that’s for sure. It entails a lot of work and you have to try to always stay inspired so that it doesn’t feel like work too much. It’s not an easy job, but I’m glad to do it.

VM: I have noticed that you are ambassador of London Music Masters. What do you do there?

BG: Well, in the past I have done workshops for them, but they have music education programmes in lots of primary schools around London. They teach all their children string instruments. The fact that they’re teaching string instruments means that what I can do in terms of workshops is, I guess, a little bit limited.

But I’ve done various things to help raise money for them recently. There was an auction. About a year or two ago, they had this project called Many Voices. They commissioned a number of living composers to write works for up to Grade 6 violin. The idea is that the children would learn these pieces. I recorded them with my wife, Hyeyoon. We met through Music Masters, actually, because she was one of their award holders. They gave awards to young violinists and so we met through the charity. We recorded that for them and the funds for that, whenever anyone streams it or buys it, could go to charity.

VM: Is it an ongoing project?

BG: Yes. It’s great for these schools that have these music programmes. I know they have a course for teachers now so that they can do similar things in other schools. They hope that they’ve created this framework that then can be taken and then put into another situation by someone else. These are schools that otherwise probably wouldn’t really have any music education because they’re normally in quite deprived or demographically mixed areas.

I met some kids recently that I did a workshop with 10 years ago and they’re at conservatoire, or doing things associated with music. They still have the interest in music that this programme has fostered in them.

VM: Do you have any role models in mind or individuals that really had a great influence on you?

BG: I don’t know if there’s anyone specifically. I mean, obviously my teachers, with whom I had a lot of contact, but in terms of other musicians, I’ve always listened very widely to many different musicians. There’s a long list of people I admire for various reasons. Pianists living and past, Michelangeli, Rubinstein, Horowitz, Quarto, Moze, Cherkassky…

I admire them all for very different reasons and I wouldn’t try to emulate any of them, but I’m inspired by what they do. They all approach the piano in very different ways. But then also, you know, conductors and string players as well. There are so many inspiring figures past and present.

VM: During Covid did you do much livestream performances? How did you find it?

BG: Yes, I did a bit. I didn’t enjoy that very much. There were a few things that were specifically organised just to be streamed. It’s all right when you’re playing chamber music with someone, but I did do one recital and it was a very odd experience.

I did a recital for the Barbican and it was livestreamed, but there was no audience in the hall, and it was very strange. They had me on a platform in the middle of the hall. You feel very exposed and then just playing the programme without anything to break the intensity.

It’s just not the same. You know the audience are listening but it’s not the same as being in the room. And then the atmosphere is so tense because there’s nothing to break it. Tomorrow I’ll play the Barcarolle and there’ll be some applause and then I’ll sit down and play again. But when you’re doing a stream like that, there’s nothing. There’s just silence when you finish. So, it was a little odd and I’m glad that time is over, hopefully.

VM: If you were to give one piece of advice to young musicians today, what would that be? Do you teach?

BG: Oh, I don’t know! I’ve done some masterclasses, but I haven’t had much experience in terms of teaching.

VM: Do you like giving masterclasses?

BG: I did really enjoy those experiences. I didn’t enjoy so much giving a masterclass in a sense, but I enjoy connecting with the student. I’m not sure I gave a good masterclass because I think to give a good masterclass, you need to both interact with the student and interact with the audience. But I decided I would just ignore the interacting with the audience side, so I just focused on the student. I think private teaching would be something I find very fulfilling.

VM: Do you have some regular students at the moment?

BG: No, I don’t at the moment, but certainly in the next few years or something. That’s something I would think about maybe. (Interview written by  Puntid Tantivangphaisal.)

We wish Benjamin all the best with his future endeavours and concerts to come, as well as any new recordings and commissioned pieces that may be in progress.