Composer's Workshop: Sir George Benjamin

Sir George Benjamin in Conversation with Richard Causton, Wednesday 5th November 3.30-4.30pm Recital Room, Faculty of Music (NB please note date and time)

George Benjamin is one of the world’s foremost musicians. In each of his fastidiously heard scores, sensuous, alchemical sounds are underpinned with rigorous architecture, never more so than in his series of operas including the ground-breaking Written on Skin.

Benjamin entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1976 to study with Messiaen, after which he worked with Alexander Goehr and Robin Holloway at King's College, Cambridge. When he was only 20 years old, Ringed by the Flat Horizon was played at the BBC Proms by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Mark Elder; the London Sinfonietta and Simon Rattle premiered At First Light two years later.  The London Symphony Orchestra under Pierre Boulez premiered Palimpsests in 2002 to mark the opening of ‘By George’, a season-long portrait which also included the first performance of Shadowlines by Pierre-Laurent Aimard. Recent seasons have seen major surveys of Benjamin’s work by the Berliner Philharmoniker, Hamburg Elbphilharmonie and Radio France’s Festival ‘Présences’.

In recent decades, Benjamin’s work has centred around his operatic collaborators with the playwright Martin Crimp. Their second stage work Written on Skin, premiered in July 2012, has since been scheduled by over 20 international opera houses, winning as many international awards. His latest collaboration with Crimp is Picture a day like this, premiered at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in July 2023, with the composer conducting the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. Benjamin was made a Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2015 and was knighted in the 2017 Birthday Honours. In 2023 he was made the 50th laureate of the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize.

Ahead of the celebration of the life and work of Prof. Alexander Goehr later in the week, this Conversation will focus on the influence of Goehr's work and teaching.