Benjamin Grosvenor

Benjamin Grosvenor (born 8 July 1992) is a British classical pianist.

Education

Grosvenor was born and brought up in Westcliff-on-Sea, Southend-on-Sea, Essex. He is the youngest of five brothers. His father is an English and Drama teacher, and his mother Rebecca is a piano teacher by profession.
Grosvenor began studying the piano with his mother at the age of five. He joined Westcliff High School for Boys in 2003. He now also took lessons from Hilary Coates and Christopher Elton in London. Grosvenor studied at the Royal Academy of Music, where he had musicianship classes with Daniel-Ben Pienaar and Julian Perkins. At his graduation as BMus in 2012 he received the Queen's Award for Excellence for the best all-round student of the year.

Performance career

In May 2003, Grosvenor gave his first full recital at a local church playing both the piano and the cello. In the same year, he made his first concert appearance with orchestra performing Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21 with the Westcliff Sinfonia. He went on to win the keyboard section of the BBC Young Musician in 2004, playing Ravel's Concerto in G in the concerto final. Some of the first concerts he played in were at the Royal Albert Hall, St George's, Bristol, Wigmore Hall, Barbican Centre, Usher Hall, Carnegie Hall and Symphony Hall.

Since then he has developed a high-profile international career. Grosvenor has performed with the London Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre National de France, Boston Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Gewandhausorchester, Gürzenich Orchestra, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Orquesta Nacional de España, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Brazilian Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra and English Chamber Orchestra, among many others.

In 2010, Grosvenor joined BBC Radio 3's New Generation Artists scheme, which he completed in 2012. In the summer of 2011, he made his debut at the BBC Proms as the youngest-ever soloist on opening night, playing Liszt's Second Piano Concerto, and Britten's Piano Concerto later in the series with the National Youth Orchestra. He has since played at the Proms numerous times, and in 2015 performed at the Last Night of the festival. Judith Weir composed her solo piano work ''Day Break Shadows Flee'' for Grosvenor, who gave its world premiere in September 2014. In 2016, he became the inaugural recipient of The Ronnie and Lawrence Ackman Classical Piano Prize with the New York Philharmonic.

For the 20/21 season, he was announced as Artist-in-Residence at Radio France and also with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.

Awards

At age 10, in 2003, he became the youngest-ever winner of four local and national competitions in the UK: The Southend Young Musician of the Year, The Essex Young Musician of the Year, The Emanuel Trophy and The EPTA Trophy. At age 11, Grosvenor was the winner of the keyboard section of the BBC Young Musician of the Year 2004 award.

In 2011, the ''Evening Standard'' selected Grosvenor as one of its "1,000 Most Influential Londoners" and ''The Daily Telegraph'' chose him as one of its "Top 10 Britons of the Year".

In 2012, this pianist "at the same time so brilliant and so promising" was awarded two Gramophone Awards: 'Instrumental Award' and 'Young Artist Award' for his debut disc with Decca, making him Gramophone's youngest-ever double award winner. He was also awarded a Classic Brit 'Critics Choice Award' for his Chopin/Liszt/Ravel CD on Decca.

His 2020 recording of the Chopin Piano Concerti won both a Gramophone award in the Concerto category, and a 'Diapason d'Or de l'année' from the French magazine Diapason with Diapason's critic declaring that the recording is “a version to rank among the best, and confirmation of an extraordinary artist.”

Recordings

In July 2005, Grosvenor appeared in the BBC
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