Sky Arts Breakthrough Award

Ben has been nominated for the Breakthrough Award as part of the Sky Arts/The Times Awards. Richard Morrison from The Times writes:

Classical: Ben Goldscheider, the horn player redefining the genre

Playing the horn superbly is hard enough. It is, as Thomas Beecham allegedly said, “an ill wind that nobody blows good”. But Ben Goldscheider does more than play the instrument. Still only 27, he is redefining its repertoire, having commissioned and premiered more than 20 big works already, with more in the pipeline. They are exciting pieces too. Most recently his terrific performance of Gavin Higgins’s atmospheric horn concerto received rave reviews across the board.

Goldscheider hails from a family of professional London string players. He started on the cello at age six and only took up the horn at nine because he suffered from bronchiectasis and his parents thought that playing a wind instrument would strengthen his lungs. It did more than that. In 2016 he reached the final of the BBC Young Musician competition — up against Sheku Kanneh-Mason on cello and Jess Gillam on saxophone. Kanneh-Mason won, but all three have gone on to galvanise the classical music scene.

Goldscheider later studied at the Barenboim-Said Academy in Berlin, played in Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra and was the glorious horn soloist on Mark Elder’s Hallé recording of Wagner’s Siegfried. Significantly his first solo recording, Legacy, was a tribute to Dennis Brain, the legendary British horn player who was killed in a car accident at the height of his powers in 1957. It’s not too fanciful to see Goldscheider as Brain’s heir: a virtuoso who rises to the challenge of the new as brilliantly as he tackles the masterpieces of the past. Richard Morrison

MICHAEL LECKIE FOR THE TIMES