Decca Records’ Product Manager, Gavin Bayliss has chosen his pick of this year’s Proms including previous Society of Sound artist Benjamin Grosvenor.

Benjamin Grosvenor – Britten’s Piano Concerto, 6th August 2011

The opening of the 2011 BBC Proms is always a momentous occasion. This year even more-so as the 19 year old pianist Benjamin Grosvenor became the youngest solo performer at the First Night of the Proms.
Performing Liszt’s virtuosic 2^nd Piano Concerto with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Jiří Bělohlávek he also gave an encore of Brahms’s Hungarian Dance No. 5 which you can see here.

Having recently signed to Decca Benjamin joins a long line of legendary pianists on the label including Vladimir Ashkenazy and Martha Argerich among others. His debut album features works by Chopin, Liszt and Ravel and is available here and you can see him playing Chopin’s Nocturne in F Sharp at the recording session here.

Joseph Calleja – Verdi’s Requiem – 24th July 2011

An artist who’s been described as ‘one of the finest lyric tenor’s before the public today’ by the Houston Chronicle is tenor Joseph Calleja. Before arriving in London to perform in Verdi’s Requiem he’s had great success with La Boheme at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, Germany. His latest album on Decca, The Maltese Tenor features arias from La Boheme and Tosca as well as arias from operas by Verdi, Gounod, Bizet and more. You can see a series of videos of Joseph talking about a variety of subjects around his new album including his beloved homeland of Malta.

Janine Jensen -Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto – 8th September 2011

In the final week of this year’s proms, violinist Janine Jansen returns to perform Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Charles Dutoit on September 8^th. The concert also features  Sibelius’ Finlandia, Ravel’s La Valse and Rachmaninov’s wonderful Symphonic Dances. Janine can be heard playing Ravel on her recent Decca album Beau Soir and you can watch Janine’s beautiful video of Faure’s Après un rêve here