Benjamin Grosvenor has signed to Decca Classics. In doing so he becomes the first British pianist to join the label in 60 years – since the days of Clifford Curzon, Moura Lympany and Peter Katin – as well as, at just 18 years old, the youngest ever.

Despite his youth, Grosvenor will already be known to many piano enthusiasts. Aged 11 he was the youngest ever finalist in the the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition. Two years later he signed to Hazard Chase management company. Aged 17 he released a recital recording called "This and That" about which Bryce Morrison, in the April 2010 edition of Gramophone, said his performances "exhibit a skill and talent not heard since Kissin’s teenage Russian debut. Even the most outlandish difficulties are tossed aside not just as child’s play but with a seemingly endless poetic finesse and resource…To call such playing that of a master-pianist will invite accusations of exaggeration and hyperbole – but what else can I say?”

Grosvenor’s first disc for Decca will be of Chopin’s Four Scherzi, Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit as well as shorter pieces by Chopin and Liszt. It will be recorded later this month, for a July release.
 
Paul Moseley, Decca Classics’ managing director, described the signing as “an enormously significant moment for Decca. As a British company proud of its heritage what could be more satisfying than making this agreement with the most exceptional British pianist to emerge in decades?”