Benjamin Grosvenor / Hyeyoon Park : Reviews

DUO

“Together with the great young British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor, Hyeyoon Park forms a world class duo. This was clear in Szymanowski’s “Myths from 1915” whose richness of colour and refined melodies require not only limitless sensitivity, but also narrative creative power … Then a spirited performance of César Franck’s A major sonata, in which the finale was particularly intoxicating. Two encores, a Hungarian dance which set sparks flying, and Schumann’s evening song: gentle and simple. Hyeyoon Park and Benjamin Grosvenor are a major event.”

– Sueddeutsche Zeitung, October 2020

“No empty hall could sound more still than it did as Hyeyoon Park and Benjamin Grosvenor spun Szymanowski’s gossamer musical fabric in the third movement. Such impressionistic music depends hugely on the quality of its surface and in this performance it was practically flawless. Grosvenor’s touch was astonishingly responsive – as supple in quiet, single-handed lyricism as in flurries of quicksilver virtuosity – while Park made stylish use throughout of portamento and her irrepressibly expressive vibrato … César Franck’s Violin Sonata – the second half of the programme – was a simultaneous showcase of Park’s huge palette of tone colours and of Grosvenor’s ability to conjure clarity from the densest of textures … After so much impassioned virtuosity, Schumann’s Abendlied Op 85 No 12 appeared stark in its simplicity. Yet it was here that Park and Grosvenor’s musical partnership achieved its most touching intimacy.”

– The Guardian, June 2020

“[In] the deft young hands of Hyeyoon Park and Benjamin Grosvenor [César Franck’s Sonata’s] candid lyricism sounded newly minted … The opening Allegretto ben moderato felt light and airy, with a hint of flexibility in the tempo … [the third movement] benefited from Park and Grosvenor’s careful shaping of the music’s restless unthreading and made way naturally for their energised account of the bustling finale … [Szymanowski Myths Op. 30] In Narcisse, Grosvenor’s piano part rocked dreamily on its haunches while Park’s violin gazed in rapture at its own reflection. It’s a long movement but the music’s thread never broke … [Schumann’s Abendlied] was a tribute to the strength of Park and Grosvenor’s musical partnership; they shared its gentle romance with control, eloquence and a loving interlace of violin and piano that could hardly be bettered.”

– Bachtrack, June 2020

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“Park and Grosvenor are as well suited to one another as to their choice of repertoire, their duo wholly and apparently effortlessly in sympathy. The Szymanowski – three pieces written during World War I, in which the composer is alternately at his most sensual and occasionally his most irritating – gave Park the chance to shine in a range of iridescent colours. Her refinement of tone in “The Fountain of Arethusa” blossomed out into a rainbowed intensity, and the piping effects in “Dryads and Pan'” which are treacherous high harmonics, were flawlessly projected. At the piano Grosvenor made light and supple work of Szymanowski’s complex writing.”

– The Arts Desk, June 2020