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Description: George Benjamin conducts Messiaen's L'Ascension (For Orchestra), Stravinsky's Violin Concerto, featuring Carolin Widmann, his own Ringed By The Flat Horizon and Ravel's Pavane Pour Une Infante Defunte and Bolero.
Phone: 0207589 8212
Website: www.royalalberthall.com
Trains: Tube: High Street Kensington 
, Tube / Bus: 9, 10, 52, 360 
Extra info: Pub, Food
Learning from the best: George Benjamin
A short, mighty cataclysm, with explosive bass drum, tam tams and cymbal, erupts at the climax of George Benjamin's Ringed by the Flat Horizon. This dazzlingly precocious orchestral work, first performed at the Proms in 1980 when he was just 20, formed the centrepiece of last night's beguiling BBCSO programme.
The score, inspired by a storm over the New Mexico desert, comes as close to imitating nature as music ever can. Yet Benjamin is always driven by harmonic imperative, never literal illustration. With bejewelled sonic detail, he prepares us for the final outburst, building tension with eddying swirls, squalls and clashing semitones that grow ever more tumultuous. The BBCSO, conducted by him, showed customary mastery.
So much could be said about this meticulously constructed programme on a French theme: with Messiaen's L'Ascension in its ecstatic orchestral version and Ravel's Bolero showing, as ever, how mad repetition can turn into brilliant invention.
Carolin Widmann was a bold, expressive soloist in Stravinsky's elusive Violin Concerto. But it was Benjamin'swork that gripped the imagination. A programme note blames journalists for the "inevitable comparisons" between the Wunderkind Benjamin (now 48) and young Mozart. But didn't Benjamin's mighty teacher Messiaen first make that observation? Enough said.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
