Violinist Nicola Benedetti is at Perth’s Concert Hall on Friday as part of a chamber trio in the latest in a recital series she has devised and organised herself. Helen Brown speaks to one of the most gifted young artists of her generation.
Wherever they lay their hat — or whichever instrument happens to be their forte — tends to be the home of the globe-trotting international musician. They don’t come much busier or more cosmopolitan than Nicola Benedetti, in demand worldwide and increasingly admired for the intensity, style and sheer brilliance of her music-making.
But when it comes to planning a diary, the Ayrshire-born violinist is the first to notice when there is a conspicuous absence of home fixtures. As we spoke, she had just returned from two dates in Canada (playing the Bruch Scottish Fantasy and the Sibelius Violin Concerto with different orchestras in Toronto and Ottawa) and was about to set off for Ireland to play the Tchaikovsky Concerto with the RTE National Symphony Orchestra. She is also due in Istanbul to play the same work under the baton of Russian maestro Mikhail Pletnev.
That’s before she comes back to Scotland to undertake a short, six-date recital tour with cellist Leonard Elschenbroich and pianist Alexei Grynysk. It’s part of a wider series based on her recent Fantasie recording and comes after a triumphant recital debut, playing sonatas by Prokofiev and Cesar Franck, at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow which was also broadcast live on BBC Radio 3.PragmaticAs a woman who once played well over 110 concerts in one year and who is currently working her way through around 70 scheduled throughout 2010, she realises that being this busy comes with the territory, but takes the very pragmatic approach that if she’s going to play the way she wants to and in the way people want to hear, she has to have time to work on that, too.
“It’s very complicated! I don’t actually like to be overly busy in terms of the buzz and pressure of events because there is the need for constant daily practice that I like and crave for. (She currently practises between six and eight hours a day.)
“Dozens of requests and potential offers come in every day but it’s a question of knowing what you need to do, making the right choices for good reasons. The recitals I have set up and personally organised myself, basically because I realised I wasn’t doing much in Scotland. I was doing more in Japan, the US than here — it was really bizarre!Big decision”It also wasn’t something I was being asked to do so I thought if I wanted to do it, I would have to go and organise it myself. I definitely wanted to do it, but it was a big decision. You have to have the right people around you. I’m very lucky to be surrounded by people who understand, who are in touch with how I work and what it means to me.
“You are constantly reassessing how much is good for your musicianship.”
That, very definitely, is what matters most. Her very serious musicianship is at the heart of everything she does. It would be impossible, ludicrous even, to gloss over the fact that she is uncommonly pretty and glamorous and in the current climate, she has all the qualifications to be a celebrity figure as much for her image as her undoubted talent.
But although it’s part of the package and she acknowledges that herself, it isn’t what she’s about. She has admitted that she enjoys choosing her stage frocks but doesn’t take much time over it. Like anyone, she likes to look good but her working life — her life, full stop — is about not just sounding good but making the very best music that she can.
Not that long ago — at 22, she is still so young that it’s hard to realise she was only 16 when she became the BBC’s Young Musician of the Year and has been a world-class performer for half a dozen years — she took some time out to reassess her career and the way her playing was going.The result was, if not a change in direction, at least a considerable change of pace.
“My career was moving at a pace that was too fast — it was good but it could have been better and I needed to think about how to do that. I always strive towards that. I’m constantly doing that, but away from the concert platform, in ways where I can practise and improve and learn all the time.
“There are lots of different trains running at the same time! Starting new works in small, not so prestigious venues, building them up, bringing them on until they and I are ready, is a constant in my life.”
Learning new repertoire is also a constant — she is currently honing and perfecting works by Shostakovich, Beethoven and Korngold which she is planning to perform in the not-too-distant future — but her current recital tour is flexing very different musical muscles and allowing her to communicate her passion in a very different way.HauntingHer CD Fantasie, released last year and on which this forthcoming series of concerts is based, highlights some of the individual greats of the violin repertoire — Vaughan Williams’ haunting The Lark Ascending, Faure’s beautiful Apres Un Reve, the Meditation from Massenet’s opera Thais and a piece for which Nicola Benedetti’s playing has garnered particular praise, contemporary composer Arvo Part’s Spiegel im Spiegel.
“It’s the kind of thing that communicates very directly to the public — it was carefully selected for that. I spent a long time on the programme so that it would be interesting for people who might be put off by something that’s 40 minutes long. There is one longer piece but it’s like a wonderful, romantic sonata, very direct and compelling.
“Speaking to people, directly and through music like this, is very exciting. It’s my baby, I’m guiding them through the experience. There’s a balance to be found between music enhanced by words and music speaking for itself.”
Her trio — she has been working with her pianist and cellist for about two years now — is a chamber music ensemble as opposed to the grand orchestral backing we are perhaps used to in her performances to date. She reckons that this kind of setup is every bit as vital to her, as a musician, as any symphonic concert appearance.
“It’s so important and key to my music-making. My desire is to share that with people and my strongest desire is to share it with people in Scotland.First time”It’s the first time I’ve done anything quite like this — Greenock, Largs, Ayr are all places I haven’t been before and I haven’t been to Perth for a while — and it’s also the first time I’ve played recitals.
“I like working within an established system, playing to audiences who come to seasonal concerts with an orchestra and where soloists fit into that. I wouldn’t wish to interfere with that too much because it’s a system that works and I don’t think it needs fixed.
“But to do this kind of recital, I had a very clear idea of what I wanted and the best thing was just to get on and do it.”
Nicola Benedetti, Leonard Elschenbroich and Alexei Grynysk are appearing in the Fantasie Recital Tour at Perth Concert Hall on April 2. For more information, visit her website.