George Benjamin

Three Miniatures, composed by George Benjamin, for solo violin in digital sheet music format.

‘… refined aural sensibility and meticulous craftsmanship… What we experience, in this haunting soundscape of shifting metres, cross-currents of orchestral breath and vibration, ba...

Overall, Benjamin's score aspired towards an exalted kind of jubilation - almost evoking angels in the music of the spheres: and as such it sounded vivid and imaginative. The Guardian (Meirion Bowen),...

An atmospheric and subtly orchestrated piece, it compels attention from the opening wisps of sound on xylophone and mandolin, threading its way through forceful baritone phrases (William Dazeley, exce...

... a beautifully wrought soundscape of crystalline bleakness out of which a soprano voice emerges. Its continuation delights by its unfailing inventiveness. The Independent (David Wright), 20 March 1...

... perhaps the most impressive, motivated handling of orchestral forces in an output which has always demonstrated an extraordinary control of large forms. And the most telling of its time-tricks is...

Instrumentation: 4(I-IV=picc, IV=afl).0.4(IV=cl in A, III+IV=bcl).0.cbsn - 3.4(I=ptpt).btpt.1.btrbn.1 - perc(3): 2 xyl/5 SD/2 whip/2 vib/2 vibraslap/2 BD/tgl/3 tpl.bl/2 congas/5 bongos/4 c.bells- pno(...

Instrumentation: 2 fl(II=picc2).picc(=fl3).2.Ebcl.2 cl(I=Eb, II=Bb, A &bcl).bcl.2.cbsn - 4.2.3.1 - timp - perc(4): 15 tpl.bl(large-very small)/2 guiros(large & small)/tam-t/2 ratchet/BD/2SD(medium & v...

After a period of intense work and isolation for Benjamin, his much-awaited new opera, Written on Skin , was premiered at the Aix-en-Provence Festival on 7 July 2012. A long standing ovation was the f...

... fresh, beautifully constructed, harmonically bewitching, and sensitively written for the instrument. The New Yorker (Andrew Porter), 12 May 1986

... were not just impressive: they seemed to enter the repertoire before one's very ears. The Sunday Times (Paul Driver), 9 February 1986

Shadowlines is a set of six canonic preludes for piano by George Benjamin. The work was conceived as a continuos cumulative structure and is approximately 15 minutes in duration.

Piano Figures was conceived for the hands of young pianists. Most of the twn short movements do not present big technical challenges, though a few do require a degree of virtuosity. At all times, howe...

This is a remarkable work, a setting of Yeats' Long-Legged Fly', where Benjamin has found a newly expressive sound world - rasping colours in rich dissonant chords, pizzicato and tremolo effects. And...

Upon Silence sets Long-legged Fly, a late poem of Yeats which portrays three momentous figures in history absorbed in silent contemplation: Julius Caesar planning a crucial military campaign, Helen of...

Le motet 'Twas in the year' de George Benjamin a été créé par le chœur du King's College de Cambridge en 1980. Il s'agit d'une mise en musique de 7 minutes d'une vision prophétique du Livre d'Isaïe po...

Picture a day like this is the fourth collaboration between George Benjamin and Martin Crimp, whose acclaimed partnership produced Written on Skin, Lessons in Love and Violence, and Into the Little Hi...

... it was the eerie beauty and uncanny originality of the music that made the dominant impression on me. The scoring is remarkable - for a sort of 'alienated' folk band . . . There are passages of et...

After a period of intense work and isolation for Benjamin, his much-awaited new opera, Written on Skin, was premiered at the Aix-en-Provence Festival on 7 July 2012. A long standing ovation was the fi...

Inspired by the fast-moving scenes and vulnerable, complex characters of Elizabethan drama, this new opera by George Benjamin and Martin Crimp considers what space, if any, exists for love and human a...

... a virtuoso tour de force... a visceral dialectic, powered by nervous energy. The Times (Helen Wallace), 21 October 1998

The work contains some of the most startlingly precise storm music ever written - it seems less evocation than the sound of the thing itself. But there is more to it than that: Eliot's lines suggested...