(Sydney, September 18, 1893 – London, April 10, 1960)
He was an Australian composer, pianist and conductor, best known for his Storm Clouds Cantata, featured in Alfred Hitchcock's film The Man Who Knew Too Much.
His first public appearance as a pianist dates back to 1899, when Benjamin was only 6 years old. Only three years later, he began the actual study of music, and in 1911, he had the opportunity to enter the prestigious Royal College of Music in London, where he studied with masters such as Charles Villiers Stanford, Thomas F Dunhill,, he returned to Australia, where he taught piano at the New South Wales State Conservatorium of Music and Frederick Cliffe. After fighting in the Royal Air Force during the First World War he returned to Australia, where he taught piano at the New South Wales State Conservatorium of Music, before returning with the same professorship at the Royal College of Music in London. Among his best students of the time, we can find artists such as Muir Mathieson, Peggy Glanville-Hicks, Miriam Hyde, Joan Trimble, Stanley Bate, Bernard Stevens, Lamar Crowson, Alun Hoddinott and Benjamin Britten, whose "Holiday Diary" (suite for solo piano) is dedicated to Benjamin, as it tries to imitate the "mannerist" part of the Australian composer. In the wake of his growing success in 1926 he performed the national premiere of George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.
In 1941, after moving to Vancouver, Canada, he was appointed director of the CBC Orchestra, a position he held until 1946 and which gave him fame throughout the New Continent, practically becoming the musical point of reference for all of Canada and beyond. . In this same period he had the opportunity to perform hundreds of concerts, as well as play for the radio and teach in several prestigious Canadian and American institutes.
Continuing his compositional work and teaching, he returned to England, to resume his post at the Royal College of Music (1946). Some of his most important works date back to these years, such as the Harmonica Concerto (1953), the ballet 'Orlando's Silver Wedding' (1951), 'Tombeau de Ravel' for clarinet and piano, the second string quartet (1959) and the Wind Quintet (1960). He had a deep admiration for Maurice Ravel, whose influence is very clear in 'Tombeau de Ravel' and the earlier 'Suite' of 1926 for solo piano.
Compared to more or less contemporary symphonies - Vaughan Williams' Sixth, Bax's Seventh, Britten's Requiem Symphony, Stravinsky's Symphony in C major, Copland's Third, Hindemith's Symphony in E flat major, for example - Benjamin's music hardly it startles or surprises. But you can hear it. The idiom is closer to Bax than anyone else. The opening movement should lower like a sky filled with storm clouds and thunder. Lyndon-Gee also appears to have little understanding of the architecture of the piece. One reviewer described this motivated work as "rhapsodic". It wasn't a compliment.
He died in 1960 from complications of an illness (possibly hepatitis) contracted while on holiday with his wife in Sri Lanka.
