Violin virtuoso Nicola Benedetti was crowned BBC Musician of the year at the age of 16. Since then she has been widely recognised as one of the world’s premier violinists.
Stopping off at the Royal Albert Hall as part of its tour, An Evening With Nicola Benedetti offers an intimate chamber performance and a varied programme of material.
Arranged for violin, cello, guitar and accordion (plus a Scottish section with pipes), the pieces chosen range from the plaintive (Polonaise by Wieniawski) to the showy (Csárdás by Monti), with a fiery finale from Carmen.
Benedetti was born in Ayrshire to an Italian father and Italian-Scottish mother. Her sister Stephanie is also a musician and her husband is jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis. Music runs through her veins, and her technique is flawless.
She is also keen to promote young, upcoming artists, notably here the piper Fin Moore and fellow violinist Emma Baird – although it would have been interesting to see Baird perform more than one piece.
Benedetti has an easy manner with the other musicians (cellist Maxim Calver, guitarist Plinio Fernandes, accordionist Samuele Telari). Chatting to the crowd also comes easy, even if her introductions don’t come at the start.
One amusing note: the opening piece, the Sicilienne is usually credited to Maria Theresia von Paradis (and is in tonight’s publicity), but Benedetti tells us no, it was actually composed by Samuel Dushkin. So we are both entertained and educated by An Evening With …
No arranger was credited tonight, but whoever took on the role did an excellent job in bringing these instruments together, especially true for Bloch’s Prayer, written for cello and piano and beautifully interpreted here.
The Royal Albert Hall is a beautiful venue, offering both an arena atmosphere and a reverential intimacy. Atmospheric lighting offers sympathetic accompaniment to the music.
An Evening With Nicola Benedetti is her first full tour in ten years, and as she says, “The music you will hear tonight is intended as a thank you to you
all: audiences I have known and been supported by for over 22 years.
This selection of music combines warm and uplifting virtuosity with seductive romance, but we have also discovered an innocent sweetness in much of this repertoire – a
sentiment quite hard to come by in this time.”
I say brava!, and 4.5*.
An Evening With Nicola Benedetti continues its UK tour until 4 Dec: details here.
Nicola’s new album, Violin Café, is now available to pre-order.