If you don’t believe the critical accolades praising 18-year-old pianist Benjamin Grosvenor’s astonishing command of the instrument and vivid interpretive gifts, you will when you’re done listening to this disc. His supple, light-fingered, playful, and imaginatively characterized Chopin Scherzi count among the best. Fanciful nuances, inner voices, and unexpected rubatos fall from Grosvenor’s sleeves like rabbits from a magician’s hat, yet these gestures enhance rather than dissipate Chopin’s structures.
The three Nocturnes are brisk but not rushed, and feature eloquently spun, gorgeously shaded, perfectly proportioned right-hand melodies. Both Chopin/Liszt song transcriptions stand out for exquisite, amazingly even filigree that yields nothing in finesse and control to Josef Hofmann’s 1935 HMV test pressings, and that’s the ultimate compliment! In contrast to pianists who play Liszt’s sparsely-textured late pieces in a gloomy, bleak manner, Grosvenor almost throws En rêve away.
Grosvenor’s gentle animation, delicacy, precision, and ravishing tonal palette set reference standards for those attracted to the underlying classicism in Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit, despite a few clipped and undersold climaxes in the Scarbo movement. For edgier, more subjective and demonically tinted Gaspards, go to Argerich and Pogorelich, but Grosvenor’s approach is on par with (and indeed sometimes surpasses) Simon, Schuch, Bavouzet, and Michelangeli. A remarkable release no piano lover should miss.
