‘I’m happy to play to children in schools. It’s tremendously important to give them access to what we do’
The pianist discusses with Jessica Duchen the importance of musical outreach, and about his new recording of works by classical music’s most celebrated love triangle
It’s 2004 and on the TV a small boy is playing the living daylights out of Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major. The performance has everything, from musical insights and gorgeousness of piano tone to a razzmatazz of glittering fingerwork, yet the pianist is barely 12 years old. It is the final of the BBC Young Musician of the Year, and eventually the title goes to a 16-year-old violinist named Nicola Benedetti – but we will be hearing more of that little pianist. He hails from Southend-on-Sea, Essex, and his name is Benjamin Grosvenor.
Now 30, Grosvenor saunters in to our lunch date, still with a slight air of boyish wonder about him. Not all prodigies make it to adult international stardom with head so intact and feet so firmly on the ground. Grosvenor has
