By virtue of his natural gifts, George Benjamin is one of the most striking presences in British music. He is an extraordinary pianist, a brilliant conductor, and, most importantly, a composer of passion and genuine innovation.

His initial explosion onto the scene while he was still a teenager seemed to promise an easy production of fluent, assured music. Instead he has chosen a path of severe self-critical development, gradually evolving a harmonic language of depth and ingenuity and a subtle instrumental palette, which could only have come from a composer with an acute ear and a disciplined technique. In all he does, as a teacher, performer, composer, and advocate of new music, he stresses emphatically the importance of the aural imagination over the attractions of systems.