PRESS

Violinist Nicola Benedetti soared fearlessly through the agitated finale of Mark Simpson’s Violin Concerto with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra on Friday, and cheers erupted in Music Hall. It was a thrilling finish to a substantial new piece that seems destined to enjoy life long after these performances.

The CSO morning concert, which opened with the U.S. premiere of Simpson’s Violin Concerto, was led by the orchestra’s associate conductor François López-Ferrer, who stepped in this week for music director Louis Langrée. Langrée has contracted the flu, the orchestra said. The program also included Richard Strauss’ “Der Rosenkavalier” Suite, and Ravel’s “La valse.”

Gosh it was good to hear the violinist live again in a concerto tailored to her strengths

Far from silenced by the pandemic, the violinist Nicola Benedettihas been using it to support young musicians, posting dozens of Zoom sessions and hundreds of videos to players of all standards round the world. It was good to hear her live again, though, and in a concerto tailored to her strengths: Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No.2 in G minor.

Simon Thompson

★★★★☆
When Stravinsky wrote The Soldier’s Tale in 1918 he scored it for miniature forces because enormous economic dislocation and a global pandemic had made it impossible for a large orchestra to perform together on stage. Sound familiar?

His distillation of the Faust legend, where a soldier unwittingly sells his soul to the devil, certainly fits the slimmed-down resources of both his time and ours, with only seven musicians and three actors to tell the story through narration and music.

Continue

Simon Thompson

★★★★★

I haven’t asked her, but I’d stake money on the idea that, if the star violinist Nicola Benedetti felt butterflies in her tummy about any of the concerts in her Edinburgh International Festival residency, it was this one.

That’s not necessarily because it’s more virtuosic than her others: it’s because it’s so exposed. This concert was her alone on stage for an hour, with nothing but a violin for company, playing some of the most fiendishly challenging works in the violin literature. The technical obstacles are forbidding enough, but the real challenge for any violinist in this music is to find the beauty lurking behind the bravura.

Continue reading

Beethoven’s violin concerto may be among the most frequently played of all violin concertos, but it was a fair bet that in the hands of the country’s favourite violinist Nicola Benedetti and our most stylish and innovative orchestra it would come up fresh and new. And so it did. This was the most exciting performance of the concerto I’ve heard in years....

Full article here.

PHOTO: Mark Allan

★★★★★
Mark Simpson’s new Violin Concerto deserves audiences far and wide. Not only the unseen online viewers on their sofas at home, but people in a concert hall, close enough to feel this music’s thrilling pulse and soak up its visceral energy. A real crowd that will no doubt clap long and loud when they hear this piece, which, even streamed, left me reeling. This was a terrific premiere.

Soloist Nicola Benedetti had been working with the orchestra during their week-long course and the rapport showed. For herself, Benedetti shaped a secure and expansive performance, giving a real kick to the dance sections of the finale. Her encore, from the Fiddle Dance Suite written for her by Wynton Marsalis, kept on swinging as she walked slowly offstage.

Proms 2020, OAE, Royal Albert Hall, review: Nicola Benedetti thrillingly brings out Vivaldi's wild side

★★★★

Despite the absence of fellow star fiddler Alina Ibragimova, this concert of six Baroque concertos proved an evening to savour …

★★★★★
When Nicola Benedetti came across Elgar’s early, memorable little tune-spinner Salut d’amour, the fledgling violinist was just six. It made her cry. And she has certainly not lost her feeling for the piece, which was featured last month in her YouTube tutorials for young musicians and is given a typically soulful performance on the final track of this incandescent album (a streaming or download-only release at the moment). Yet it took until she was skirting 30 before Benedetti began exploring and playing the album’s big beast, Elgar’s Violin Concerto of 1910, which is emotionally and technically one of the repertoire’s most taxing.

The delay was wise and maturity’s fruits are everywhere in this ardent account, recorded late last year with the London Philharmonic

Sunday, June 24, 2018 Barbican Hall, London Reviewed by Guy Holloway @ Classical Sourc There is nothing like a sold-out Shostakovich concert, and a queue for returns comprising both the young and the old, to restore one’s faith that we are au fond a healthy society. First up was the First Violin Concerto which, following […]

The Herald Scotland, Academy of Ancient Music, Queens Hall Edinburgh  Keith Bruce Queen’s Hall ★★★★★ ‘the most exquisite playing I have heard from her.’ WHEN violinist Nicola Benedetti joined the RSNO for its dates in Florida last year, it was straight from a US tour with the Venice Baroque Orchestra, and a transition for the […]

The Times, Academy of Ancient Music, Queens Hall Edinburgh  Queen’s Hall ★★★★★ ‘Nicola Benedetti is on such sensational form at present that she could play the Midlothian Yellow Pages and still mesmerise a crowd.’ With due respect to Simon Rattle et al, I will be amazed if the music programme at this year’s Edinburgh International […]

★★★★★ BENEDETTI ELSCHENBROICH GRYNYUK TRIO (MUSICA VIVA) Acclaimed soloists join forces for a program of musical brilliance and passion. by Ben Wilkie on November 6, 2018 FacebookTwitterEmail|55 Melbourne Recital Centre November 3, 2018 To open Musica Viva’s final concert series for 2018, the Benedetti Elschenbroich Grynyuk Trio explored Richard Strauss’ bellowing, brooding Cello Sonata in F Major, […]

by Janet Thomson A substantial Suite from Tchaikovsky’s Ballet Sleeping Beauty followed: from the urgent Introduction, through the characterful woodwind of the Lilac Fairy, the grand Adagio, the colourfully descriptive Puss-in-Boots, to the famous Panorama, done full justice, and  finally the well-known, vertiginous Waltz. Described as a big sister to all in Sistema Scotland, the […]

Scottish violinist Nicola Benedetti has been awarded a CBE (Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) for services to music in the 2019 New Year Honours list. The honour is one class below a damehood/knighthood. Benedetti has worked with organisations such as Sistema Scotland and the Nordoff Robbins music therapy charity, and has […]

By Terry Blain   Is there a more daunting challenge for concert violinists than the Chaconne from Bach’s Partita in D minor? Probably not. Its 12-plus minutes of unaccompanied playing leave the soloist with nowhere to hide, and there are slippery slopes to fall off at practically every corner. The Scottish violinist Nicola Benedetti made […]

Usher Hall, Edinburgh Keith Bruce ***** THESE may have been the premiere Scottish performances of the concerto that Wynton Marsalis has written for violinist Nicola Benedetti, but she had already given the home audience a taste of it by way of a little blues encore, and the piece has undergone substantial revision since she played […]

THERE’S a growing trend for soloists to also direct when playing with smaller scale chamber ensembles, and why not? After all, Mozart did. Leading this performance of two of his violin concertos, Nicola Benedetti was able to enjoy a closer and more intimate rapport with the orchestra. In the Violin Concerto No.3 in G there […]

Playing with such energy, such synergy and such general camaraderie at the start of a tour must surely pave the way for even greater things to come. The Scottish Chamber Orchestra with Nicola Benedetti kicked off their European tour at Birmingham Town Hall, ahead of performances in Denmark, Switzerland and Germany. Opening with Mozart’s Third […]