Outstanding Works Collection

Outstanding Works Collection George Benjamin

Awards As a composer, conductor and teacher, Sir George Benjamin is a central figure in UK music. Yet his influences almost all come from Europe, and particularly France. Introduced to Olivier Messiaen while still at school, he began taking monthly composition lessons with the French master at the age of 16 and piano lessons with his wife, Yvonne Loriod. Eight years later he attended courses at the Parisian electronic music studios of IRCAM, where he wrote Antara (1985–7) to mark the 10th anniversary of the Pompidou Centre. He has written several major works for the pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard – including Shadowlines (2001) for piano, shortlisted for the first British Composer Awards – and had important friendships with Pierre Boulez, Henri Dutilleux and Gérard Grisey.

Beginning with Ringed by the Flat Horizon (1979–80), commissioned by the BBC Proms when he was still just 20, and continuing through the landscapes of A Mind of Winter (1981) and the layered textures of Palimpsests (1998–2002), Benjamin’s vivid visual imagination has been supported by a French love of pungent harmonies and glittering orchestral colours. In his smaller pieces, he often turns to abstract or purely musical topics: Shadowlines is a series of six canons; Three Inventions for Chamber Orchestra (1993–5) a trio of studies in musical interactions. Still other pieces, such as Olicantus (2002), a 50th birthday present for Oliver Knussen, are tributes to close friends and colleagues.

Benjamin’s music – equally architectural and lyrical – is constructed meticulously from small collections of pitches, which he once described as ‘like real people’, able to confront and change each other as people do. A chance meeting with the writer Martin Crimp in 2005 unlocked this inherently dramatic conception, turning Benjamin towards the theatre for the first time and a hitherto undiscovered fluency. Their collaboration has led to three operas to date: Into the Little Hill (2006), Written on Skin (2009–12), and Lessons in Love and Violence (2015–17), the second of which, winner of a British Composer Award in 2013, has become one of the most acclaimed works of the 21st century.

Outstanding Works Collection