George Benjamin is one of the major composers of our times.
After the triumph of his two operas, Written on Skin (2012), which the ONL will perform on 25 January 2024, and Lessons in Love and Violence (2018), the British composer returned to symphonic composition with his brilliant Concerto for orchestra. As a student at the Conservatoire de Paris aged 17, George Benjamin studied composition with Olivier Messiaen, who compared the young Benjamin to Mozart. George Benjamin will conduct Messiaen’s Les Offrandes oubliées alongside a marvel from the contemporary repertoire, Ligeti’s Lontano, an immense, shifting soundworld in which the orchestral textures combine to incredible effect. As for Debussy’s La Mer, it is a universal work of astonishing sound and structure, possibly the composer’s all-time masterpiece.