Review: George Benjamin, at Mostly Mozart, Shows Depth as a Conductor
Mr. Benjamin demonstrated to a nearly full house at Alice Tully Hall that he is a highly skilled conductor. In a program presented by the increasingly innovative Mostly Mozart festival, Mr. Benjamin led the International Contemporary Ensemble, a crack new-music group, in riveting, lucid accounts of Messiaen’s “Oiseaux Exotiques” and Ligeti’s Piano Concerto, both featuring the brilliant French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard. After intermission, Mr. Benjamin conducted “Into the Little Hill,” his 2006 chamber opera, a grimly modern take on “The Pied Piper of Hamelin,” with an eerily alluring 40-minute score. That Mr. Benjamin led such an assured account of his mysterious opera was no surprise. His depth as a conductor came through especially in the dazzling performances of the Messiaen and Ligeti works he drew from the superb players.
This unconventional opera might seem hard to stage, though a simple, effective production was presented by Lincoln Center Festival in 2007. Mr. Benjamin’s rumbling, spectral and mysterious music, scored for an unusual ensemble including basset horns and a banjo, worked its magic in Sunday’s taut, intense concert performance…the agile soprano Hila Plitmann brought radiant sound, even during passages of sky-high vocal writing, to the Stranger and the Minister’s Child. Both also sang the music of the Narrator and the Crowd.