Biography

British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor first came to prominence as the keyboard winner of the 2004 BBC Young Musician Competition at the age of eleven. The youngest of five brothers, he began playing the piano at age six. At nineteen, Mr. Grosvenor performed with the BBC Symphony on the First Night of the 2011 BBC Proms to a sold-out Royal Albert Hall. He returned to the BBC Proms in 2012, performing with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Charles Dutoit. Mr. Grosvenor graduated from the Royal Academy of Music in July 2012, and he has studied with Christopher Elton, Leif Ove Andsnes, Stephen Hough, and Arnaldo Cohen, among others.

Recent and future highlights include engagements with the National Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, and Orquesta de Euskadi, as well as recital debuts at the Boston Celebrity Piano Series, Club Musical de Québec, Salle Gaveau, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, and Southbank Centre, London. His chamber music engagements include a performance at the Southbank Centre’s International Chamber Music Series with the Endellion String Quartet, and further collaborations with the Escher String Quartet and the Elias Quartet. Mr. Grosvenor made his debut with the San Francisco Symphony in July 2013; these current performances mark his subscription debut with the Orchestra.

In 2011 Mr. Grosvenor became the youngest British musician ever signed to the Decca Classics label, and the label’s first British pianist in almost sixty years. His first recording for Decca includes Chopin’s Four Scherzos and Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit. His most recent recording for Decca, with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and James Judd, includes Saint-Saëns’s Piano Concerto No. 2, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, and Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major, interspersed with transcriptions by Godowsky and Percy Grainger. Mr. Grosvenor’s previous recordings include Chopin rarities for the 200th anniversary edition of Chopin’s complete works on EMI and his debut solo recording, This and That.

Mr. Grosvenor has received Gramophone’s Young Artist of the Year and Instrumental awards, a Classic Brit Critics Award, the UK Critics Circle Award for Exceptional Young Talent, and a Diapason d’Or Jeune Talent award. He has been featured in two BBC television documentaries, and on BBC Breakfast, The Andrew Marr Show, and CNN’s “Human to Hero” series.

(September 2014)