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01/04/2008
Eminent Pianist Clifford Benson Leaves His Compositional Legacy

On 12th May, Landor Records releases the complete piano works by one of the leading English pianists of the last 50 years.

Throughout his distinguished career, Clifford Benson formed long-lasting partnerships with prominent performers including clarinettist Dame Thea King, violinist Levon Chilingirian, flautist William Bennett, and also worked with singers including Ian Partridge and Stephen Varcoe.

Although he was internationally regarded as a performer, it is less well known that Clifford Benson was also a gifted composer and this recording, personally overseen and endorsed by Benson shortly before his tragic death from a brain tumour last year, presents a profusion of colours and moods and captures the spirit of this much-loved character.

Clifford Benson had intended to record the repertoire himself in his 60th birthday year. As the recording date drew nearer and his radiotherapy treatment began, he worked eagerly to prepare his beautiful, hand-written manuscripts for the recording sessions. However, the illness had caused him to lose the use of his right arm and so he turned to a trusted friend and colleague, the hugely respected pianist Michael Dussek, to perform on the recording. It was testament to his determination to see the project through before his death that Benson was present at the sessions and by his wife Dilys’ account, “was so happy with the results.”

“I never met Clifford Benson,” says Guy Harvey, chief executive of Landor Records, “but like many avid collectors of recordings of the last 25 years his was a name well known to me as a chamber player and accompanist. That he was a composer too was something I did not find out until too late - and the loss was clearly mine.”

Benson began composing early in his performing career, always at the keyboard, and was a talented improviser. Although the pieces are frequently witty and graced by a wonderful simplicity, they are always imbued with a true seriousness about music, an unerring harmonic instinct and the care for every note so evident in his own playing. From the poignant strains of ‘Romance d’amour’ and ‘Consolation’, to the witty jazz inflections of ‘Mozart Goes To Town’ and the compositional grand tour of ’18 Variations on Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star’, which alludes to composers from Bach to Scott Joplin, it is clear that Clifford Benson was a master of the piano miniature and his music is likely to win him a new audience that never heard him perform live.

‘Clifford Benson: Piano Works’ is released on Monday, 12th May 2008.