Arts preview: Benjamin Grosvenor tackles the composer's piano concerto

Last year was a big one for anniversaries marking the centenaries of composers, including Wagner, Verdi and Britten. Although the New Year has already turned, there's an attractive line-up for this year's Hong Kong Arts Festival. The Hong Kong Sinfonietta's concert on February 28 has as its centrepiece Britten's Piano Concerto, featuring the outstanding young British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor.

Yip Wing-sie, the Sinfonietta's music director, is excited about the prospect of working with the acclaimed 21 year-old. "I really enjoyed the fabulous performance he gave of the Britten concerto at the BBC Proms," she says, referring to the 2011 event that helped bring Grosvenor to international prominence.

"Benjamin Grosvenor is now one of the most sought-after pianists on the music scene, so we are naturally delighted that he will be performing with us for his Hong Kong debut."

When Grosvenor stepped onto the stage at London's Royal Albert Hall to perform the concerto in 2011, he was literally following in the footsteps of the composer; Britten himself gave the first performance in the same venue at a Proms concert in 1938. This led Grosvenor to dutifully research both the event and the work, which stands as a one-off in Britten's catalogue.

"There is little else in his output in a similar vein, as he later turned his pianistic focus to accompanying," Grosvenor says, recalling that, during the premiere, "Britten's shirt button flew off into the audience."