At my curmudgeonly worst I’m skeptical of child prodigies, when I’m better tempered I just fear for their future. Eleven-year old Benjamin Grosvenor was the youngest-ever winner of the 2004 BBC Young Musician of the Year Competition, and at age 13 he made his Carnegie Hall and Royal Albert Hall debuts. In 2011 he became the youngest British musician signed to the Decca label. Now, after hearing his debut album for Decca, I’m neither skeptical nor concerned about his future; he’s amazing and his future should be limitless.Grosvenor has programmed an interesting album. He opens with Chopin’s Four Scherzos and balances things nicely by placing a Nocturne after each one. Sitting in the center of the program, serving as what Grosvenor calls in the liner notes “an unusual pivot” between Chopin and Ravel, is Liszt’s En rêve and two Liszt transcriptions of Chopin songs. Ravel’sGaspard de la nuit closes the program.
