Benjamin Grosvenor HOMAGES

Benjamin Grosvenor's fourth album on the Decca Classics label, Homages explores works by great composers paying tribute to their predecessors.

Mendelssohn and Franck look back to the Prelude & Fugue form made so popular by Bach. Busoni takes Bach's great solo violin Chaconne and reinterprets it in a bold and imaginative transcription for piano. Chopin breathes new life into the traditional Barcarolle of Venetian gondoliers, followed ten years later by Liszt's tribute to Italian folk song, Venezia e Napoli.  

"Benjamin Grosvenor has the art (and the patience and courage) to plan ingenious programmes which offer a multicoloured zig zag between styles and moods ... His pianistic ingenuity, his lyrical voice and aristocratic distinction, remind one of the young Josef Hofmann or Ignaz Friedman. The whole recital is charged with Romantic élan. [In the Bach-Busoni Chaconne] Benjamin Grosvenor's way is highly articulate and grandiloquent, rendering a flaming vision ... a feeling of unity despite the abundance of motifs; infinite fantasy in the ornamentation yet exactitude in the outlining structure; a sonorous framework arranged with distinction, like the overlapping sculptures that adorn doorways; moments of sweetness or of solemnity."
- Diapason, September 2016 (awarded Diapason d'Or)