Benjamin Grosvenor directs The Britten Sinfonia, Barbican, concert review: 'A revelatory performance'

The young superstar pianist Benjamin Grosvenor turns his hand to directing from the keyboard ​

Benjamin Grosvenor

The Britten Sinfonia, an ensemble renowned for their innovative programming, high standard of performance and eschewing of a principal conductor – in favour of collaborations which read like a Who’s Who of today’s musical world – were celebrating ten years of violinist Jacqueline Shave’s directorship.

The line-up featured a commission from Moscow-born Elena Langer, fresh from the success of her WNO opera Figaro Gets a Divorce in February. She too boasts an impressive CV of collaborations with leading opera houses, including being appointed the Almeida's first resident composer in 2002 at 27. Story of an Impossible Love was an appealingly tonal concoction, a sort of Brief Encounter for oboe and violin.

They kicked off with a single frenetic movement from Bartók’s second quartet and concluded with Strauss’s swirling 23-string Metamorphosen, but also on display was the truly exceptional musicianship of the young Benjamin Grosvenor, directing Mozart’s last Piano Concerto from the keyboard. Written the year he died, this is one of Mozart’s most intimate utterances. Under Grosvenor’s faultless touch, every tiny shift of temperature and nuance was made eloquent and entirely coherent. You could hear foreshadowings of Beethovenian butterfly gaiety over the gathering shadows, Schubertian nostalgia with his particular admixture of joy tinged with sadness. Unaffected, and perfectly balanced with the Sinfonia, it was a revelatory performance.