GEORGE BENJAMIN List of Works BIOGRAPHY CONTENTS George Benjamin is one of the outstanding composers of his Biography 2 generation. Born in 1960, Benjamin started to play the piano at the Introduction (Eng) 3–4 age of seven, and began composing almost immediately. In 1976 he Introduction (Ger) 5 entered the Paris Conservatoire to study with Olivier Messiaen Introduction (Fr) 6 (composition) and Yvonne Loriod (piano), after which he studied Opera 7 under Alexander Goehr at King’s College Cambridge. His first orchestral work, Ringed by the Flat Horizon, was played at the Orchestral 7–8 BBC Proms when he was just 20; since then it has achieved a Ensemble/Chamber Orchestra 8–9 remarkable international performance record, as have his two Instrumental 9–10 subsequent works, A Mind of Winter and At First Light. Antara was a Brass Band 10 commission from IRCAM to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Choral/Vocal 11 Pompidou centre in 1987, and Benjamin was offered ‘Carte blanche’ Electronics 11 at l’Opéra Bastille in 1992. The premiere of Sudden Transcriptions 11 Time was given at the first Meltdown Festival in 1993, followed by Three Inventions for Chamber Orchestra at the 75th Salzburg Festival Selected reviews 12–21 in 1995. Discography 22–23 The LSO and Pierre Boulez gave the world premiere of Palimpsests Index 24 in 2002 to mark the opening of the LSO’s season-long retrospective of his work at the Barbican, ‘By George”, a project which also included the premiere of Shadowlines played by Pierre-Laurent Aimard. In recent years there have been numerous other major retrospectives of his work, including Brussels (Ars Musica, 2003), Tokyo (Tokyo Opera ABBREVIATIONS City, 2003), Berlin (DSO, 2004–05), Strasbourg (Musica Festival, 2005) and Madrid (Spanish National Orchestra, 2005). The centrepoint of a WOODWIND large-scale portrait at the 2006 Festival d’Automne in Paris was his first picc piccolo; fl flute; afl alto flute; bfl bass flute; ob operatic work, Into the Little Hill, a collaboration with the English oboe; ca cor anglais; cl clarinet; bcl bass clarinet; playwright Martin Crimp which has been greeted with international cbcl contrabass clarinet; bsn bassoon; cbsn contra- bassoon acclaim. He has accepted the fourth Roche commission, which resulted in Duet for piano and orchestra, which was premiered during his BRASS tenure as composer in residence at the 2008 Lucerne Festival. hn horn; fl.hn flugelhorn; ptpt piccolo trumpet (Bb); He has built up a close relationship with the Tanglewood Festival in tpt trumpet; btpt bass trumpet; trbn trombone; btrbn America since his first appearance there in 1999. As a conductor he bass trombone works with some of the world’s leading ensembles and orchestras, PERCUSSION amongst them the London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Modern, the BBCSO, ant.cym antique cymbals; BD bass drum; c.bell cow the Cleveland, San Francisco and Concertgebouw orchestras and the bell; cast castanets; chin.cym chinese cymbal; crot Berlin Philharmonic. crotales; cyms pair of cymbals; glsp glockenspiel; In 1999 he made his operatic debut conducting Pelléas et mcas maracas; mar marimba; SD side drum; siz.cym Mélisande at La Monnaie, Brussels and he has conducted numerous sizzle cymbal; susp.cym suspended cymbal; t.bells tubular bells; tam-t tam-tam; tamb tambourine; TD world premieres, including important works by Wolfgang Rihm, Unsuk tenor drum; tgl triangle; tpl.bl temple block; vib Chin, Grisey and Ligeti. vibraphone; wdbl wood block; xyl xylophone; George Benjamin lives in London, and is the Henry Purcell Professor STRINGS of Composition at King’s College, London. He was artistic consultant to the BBC’s three year retrospective of the 20th Century music, Sounding vln violin; vla viola; vlc cello; db double bass the Century, and was invited to become an associate artist at London’s KEYBOARDS South Bank in 2006. He was made a Chevalier dans l’ordre des Arts et pno piano; cel celesta; synth synthesiser Lettres in 1996 and was elected to the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, only the fourth time such an honour has been bestowed on a British OTHERS composer. In 2001 he was awarded the Deutsche Symphonie hp harp Orchester’s first ever Schoenberg Prize for composition. All other instrument names are given in full His works are recorded on Nimbus Records www.wyastone.co.uk © Faber Music 2009 For an up-to-date biography, please contact Faber Music on [email protected], or consult www.fabermusic.com 2 INTRODUCTION TO THE MUSIC George Benjamin may not celebrate his 50th birthday of the orchestra from the podium was already until next year, but his composing career already informing his composition, which in its articulation comfortably stretches back more than 30 years. Though and exploration of different kinds of musical time, it’s temptingly convenient to date the start of that career remains one of his most ambitious and far-reaching from Benjamin’s first orchestral score, Ringed by the works. If there was a sense of breakthrough about it, Flat Horizon, which received its premiere at Cambridge as if a new phase in his music had been initiated, it University in 1980, while he was studying there, his proved to be the first of just four major works that work list already included a clutch of significant pieces Benjamin produced in 1990s, even though each of written in his late teens, during and after his studies with them was utterly different from the others. Olivier Messiaen in Paris, including a substantial sonata After Sudden Time, the Three Inventions for for his own instrument, the piano. Those works show Chamber Orchestra, completed in 1995, pushed how surefooted Benjamin’s early development was, so Benjamin’s musical language into new territory, both that those of us lucky enough to be at the premiere of dramatically and expressively, and in retrospect might Ringed by the Flat Horizon are never likely to forget the have been the start of the steady (I almost wrote precocious mastery of large-scale form and harmonic ‘stately') progress towards Benjamin’s first music movement, combined with an already faultless ear for theatre work, Into the Little Hill, which would orchestral colour, that its undergraduate composer was eventually appear in 2006. Perhaps too Sometime demonstrating. With this single 20-minute work, Voices, a setting for baritone and orchestra of one of however, Benjamin announced himself as a new voice Caliban’s speeches from Shakespeare’s The Tempest in British music and when the piece was played in the which was commissioned for the opening of BBC Proms the following summer, he began to establish Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall in 1996, was also a an international reputation too. pointer to that future theatrical work. Yet as a At Cambridge the rigour of Benjamin’s early demonstration of how Benjamin’s aural imagination modernist training under Messiaen had been remained peerless among composers of his complemented and reinforced by composition studies generation, the far more modestly scaled Viola, Viola with Alexander Goehr, and in the years following Flat is a paradigm. In an unambiguously assertive tour de Horizon his exceptional talent was confirmed by two force for two violas lasting barely ten minutes, which more dazzlingly effective scores, the Wallace Stevens makes use of surprisingly few of the extended playing setting of A Mind of Winter and the J M W Turner- techniques that have characterised much string writing inspired At First Light, for chamber orchestra. Yet in the last quarter century, Benjamin conjures an through the rest of the 1980s major new works almost orchestral range of sonority, almost appeared relatively slowly. Only two pieces, Antara symbiotically entwining the two instruments and for two flutes, sampling keyboards and ensemble, banishing their familiar image as purveyors of melodic which was composed as a result of an invitation melancholy. Benjamin received from Pierre Boulez to work with That same measured rate of production has the cutting-edge computerised technology of IRCAM generally continued through the first decade of the in Paris and, in utter contrast, the W B Yeats setting of 21st century, though the actual composition of the Upon Silence, for mezzo soprano and the delightfully pieces that have emerged has sometimes been archaic ensemble of a consort of viols, significantly remarkably rapid. The wonderfully complex orchestral expanded Benjamin’s musical range. The meticulous textures of the two Palimpsest pieces took three years formal planning and exquisitely imagined sound to reach their final form, but both Dance Figures and worlds that characterised each work were, it seemed, Into the Little Hill, which, Benjamin has said, could the return on an immense investment in not have been written without his experience of compositional preparation and effort. ‘I am obsessed composing the mosaic of small, closed forms of that with harmony and the perception of harmony, preceding orchestral work, were completed speedily, Benjamin said last year, ‘I don’t write music in which I without ever compromising the principles of formal can’t hear the harmonies, and can’t tell whether the clarity and harmonic logic he has maintained notes are in the right place or not’. throughout his career. The exact compositional Through the late 80s Benjamin’s burgeoning career procedures may change from work to work – as a conductor was providing the perfect complement Shadowlines, the set of piano pieces that Benjamin to his meticulously detailed creative activity, and these composed in 2001 for his friend and fellow Messiaen twin activities have fertilised each other ever since. pupil Pierre-Laurent Aimard fixate on canons, for The textures of the orchestral Sudden Time, which instance – but the over-arching principles informing received its premiere in 1993 after a protracted four them have never shifted.