George Benjamin came in like a breaking ball in the 1980 music world. He was merely twenty-two when he wrote At first light, a composition for a fourteen-element ensemble and a piece that was met, upon its release, with surprise and admiration, both for Benjamin’s orchestral ability – he had been a pupil of Messiaen’s – and for its timbral violence. Shadowlines, a piano composition comprising six preludes, reveals the same determination in looking for sculptured musical lines and aggressive lead-ins that build up stronger and stronger, unresolved tensions. Performing at Ca’ Giustinian on September 27 will be Bertran Chamayou.
