Press
- A List of Quotes
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Humphrey Burton, BBC Radio 3 20.11.05
" A major new name on the new music horizon"
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Barry Witherden, BBC Music Magazine 11.11.07
"Benjamin Wallfisch is just 28 but he has already accumulated so many awards and distinctions that a list would be longer than this review. He conducted the premiere of Escape Velocity at last year’s Proms and that performance is featured here. Concertino and Trio also appear in excellent concert recordings, but even the studio sessions have an immediacy which does full justice to the vibrancy and sense of adventure in these compositions. Wallfisch has the knack of sounding edgy and assured simultaneously. His use of colour and dynamics is striking yet subtle, and all these pieces, despite the obvious skill and deliberation that have gone into them, have a seemingly spontaneous fluidity of line. Even at its densest there is and airiness about the music, its textures clear, its outlines sharp. The Concertino contains some of the most riveting writing for Clarinet I have ever heard and having experienced Trio it’ll be hard to be condescending about the recorder ever again. Wallfisch can do emotion as well as virtuosity. The troubled, compassionate, unsentimental Requiem, performed by three generations of his family, including a grandmother who survived the Holocaust, remembers a fourth generation that did not live through it. Five Stars."
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Arnold Whittall, Gramophone 11.11.07
"At the relatively tender age of 27, Benjamin Wallfisch has already begun to make his mark. Being a member of a multi-talented musical family hasn't deterred him from exploring a wide range of compositional possibilities, and this disc [Escape Velocity] reveals a language securely based in a coherent response to some of the most stimulating aspects of the contemporary scene - serious, popular, ethnic. [...] There's plenty here to promise longer-lasting interest: and everything is performed and recorded with such liveliness and clarity I can't imagine even the most dedicated anti-modernist not being won over."
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Robert Matthew-Walker, International Record Review 11.11.07
"I found Escape Velocity an extraordinarily compelling piece. It is not very long - eight minutes in duration - but it is a serious and thoughtful score, covering wide ranges of emotion, dynamics and tempos, all held together by a string, unbroken thread. [...] Each of the eight single works on this disc is well worth the attention of the enquiring music lover, receiving superb performances from the wide range of very gifted performers. I have to say that I found this music, the first by Benjamin Wallfisch which I have encountered, to be of such genuinely consistent creative musicality that I shall follow his future career with great interest."
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Andrew Clements, The Guardian 18.11.02
"The highlight was the PLG commission, a trio from Benjamin Wallfisch that drew remarkable textures from the instruments. Here was a composer who had rethought, in an arresting way, the potential of the instruments for which he was writing."
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The Stage 17.11.03
"21 is one of the most stunning pieces of mixed media dance theatre I have seen."
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Colin Anderson, Classical Source 11.11.06.png)
"Wallfisch’s Escape Velocity, which the composer conducted with flair and attracted a virtuoso re-sponse from OSJ, made a big impression [...] As music, Escape Velocity is both atmospheric and suspenseful, and the numerous effects and colours remind of three Polish composers, Lutoslawski and Penderecki and, further back, Szymanowski, the latter summoned in the ecstatic violin solos that were beautifully played by Jan Schmolk. The music’s suggestive power is considerable, not least the allusion of travelling ever-higher (escaping) and the speeding into the unknown."
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Serena Fenwick, Musical Pointers 05.09.06
"[Escape Velocity is] a breathtaking piece for orchestra and audience alike, and certainly one where those in the hall were at an advantage of seeing as well as hearing."