ALEXIS SEBRING
Life Assistant
MACK CARROLL/Asst. Photo Editor
The musical passion that flowed from professional musician Nicola Benedetti’s violin at Raitt Recital Hall on Sunday was an inspiration to all who heard. The notes showered the audience and enabled them to find a key, even for a moment, to the heart of classical music.
“Nicola masterfully played the violin,” said freshman Daniel Dugger. “Her passion and beauty resonated through the hall with an array of strong, angelic notes in a way that I have never heard before.”
Benedetti has played violin since she was 5 years old and admits she started only because her older sister played. Thanks to her sister’s influence, she continued playing and was named BBC’s Young Musician of the Year in 2004.
The 20-year-old violinist has performed with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Academy of St. Martins at the Fields, and with the City of London Symphony on a tour of China. That is naming just a few of the places she has gone. However, she didn’t predict she would win such great awards.
“I’ve never been a big fan of competition,” Benedetti said. “I went to very few competitions when I was young because my parents are complete non-musicians and didn’t really know how best to educate me musically.”
Beginning Sunday’s concert with Bach’s complex “Chaconne” from Partita No. 2 in D minor, Benedetti exhibited with no hesitation her true love and talent for playing the violin. She memorized this 13-minute piece and played with such fervor and accuracy that it easily elicited dramatic emotions from each individual in the room.
“The music conveyed so many emotions it was difficult to focus on simply one feeling,” Dugger said.
Through her sweet notes and swaying body, she has an abstract sort of conversation with her audience. She claimed she is trying to communicate “something emotional, something nurturing as opposed to impressive.”
Benedetti admits to practicing an average of four to five hours a day, eight hours being the maximum. As well as practicing on her own, she does have a mentor who she looks to for advice.
“I’m studying with a guy who teaches in Vienna, Austria, but I only see him maybe once a month, if that,” she said. “Even if it’s an opinion you disagree with, it makes you confirm what you feel about the music just to have someone opposing you.”
“Also to have another pair of ears, when you’re attached to this thing under your neck all the time it’s very difficult to get another perspective on it.”
After she gracefully finished her last piece, “Tzigane” by Ravel, the audience demanded an encore. She granted the wishes of the crowd and soothed them with a gentle, yet adamant piece called “Meditation” by Thais.
Her performance received numerous amounts of positive reactions. Freshman Jared LaGroue greatly enjoyed Benedetti’s performance.
“From a creative perspective, her interpretation and relation of the classics inspire a deep emotional element,” LaGroue said. “Benedetti is fantastic at bringing a new found excitement to an enduring genre.”
For such a young musician, Benedetti has accomplished more than the average 20-year-old. She has developed a skill of performing, which doesn’t only mean learning what to play, but how to play and accurately deliver a meaningful recital.
“You’re kind of on a journey and in a bit of a trance [when performing]” she said. “But at the same time there are so many things to take care of all the time, with both hands, with the music, what the person you’re playing with is doing. There’s a much larger picture than just sort of getting through, note by note.”
For Benedetti, the ideal thing to focus on when performing is “what journey [she is] going on and should be bringing everybody on with [her].”
Benedetti and her deep, full sounding Earl Spencer Stradivarius did indeed take every person listening to her on a journey. This is exactly what she wants.
“I think people should feel that they’ve been moved and that they’ve been touched and they’ve been given something that you can’t get from anything other than music,” she said. “You can’t get it from sports or a sort of real competitive thing; this is something that should be good for people.”
01-17-2008
