Living Scotsman articles

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From Living Scotsman...


Benedetti's album cover-up shows maturity beyond her years
SARAH JONES

FROM a purely superficial point of view, it is something of a relief to us girls to see that Nicola Benedetti, the talented young violinist launched on a galactic trajectory by her BBC Young Musician win two years ago, has not been cajoled into a 'cleavage shot' for the front of her second album.

Having interviewed her for this paper over a year ago, and seen the consistency with which she has talked about her dedication to becoming a respected musician, I did think it unlikely, but there is something about the marketing of 'classical' music today that makes you question your judgment.

The value of good marketing is not to be sniffed at. Benedetti is certainly doing the circuit to what must be an exhaustive degree, given that she aims to maintain a six-hour per day schedule for practising. The past year has seen her do a mixture of what any musician determined to maintain the respect of her peers must to increase her profile and experience. Then there is the pressure to maintain record sales, to live up to 'that contract', and retain interest in a fickle, media-savvy world which concentrates, in the 'new classical era', on sex, youth and personality; and her commitment to getting music out to new audiences.

So while Benedetti's eponymous album displays three posh frocks, the shots are not Vanessa-Mae, but rather a mixture of the elegant, stylish and gently humorous. This, you sense, is a woman who wants to be taken seriously, but also wouldn't mind being allowed to have a bit of a laugh now and again.

It's a tricky choice for a record company which must know the value of a youthful star. The Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, the opening track, is not marketed as 'everyone's favourite violin concerto' and Benedetti is allowed to talk intelligently about her musical choices. The launch tomorrow, a live performance and CD signing in Glasgow's Virgin Megastore, swiftly followed by Edinburgh, might seem more pop star than classical, but it is also one that will appeal to the demographic she most wants to introduce to classical music - the young. It will also maintain the down-to-earth persona that sees her continuing to play in schools, local halls and with amateur and youth orchestras, despite the fact that she reputedly earns £10,000 for a 20 minute recital on the professional circuit.

Things for Benedetti are changing. She recently acquired her own manager, Steve Abbott, who also managed classical crossover singer Hayley Westenra, although one assumes he will have been given the lowdown by Benedetti on her well-publicised views on 'crossover'. This, after all, is the woman who at 18 managed to retain repertoire control over her six-album record deal with Deutsche Gramaphon.

What Benedetti needs above all is time. Slowly, despite the hype, she is ticking the boxes. She may still be tied to the 'Young Musician' tag - getting away from that will be the next marketing challenge - but her second CD already progresses substantially from her impressive first. The inclusion of a new commission from fellow Ayrshire native James MacMillan (who also conducts) not only suggests a broadening of scope, but is played with a vitality and musical emotion that is mesmerising at the end of a CD with range that shows the imprint of a nascent musical personality.

If this is Benedetti's 'youthful' Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, it will be interesting to hear her play it in 20 years time. Somehow, I don't doubt that she will hold on to her acumen long enough to give us that performance.


Roger

[roger]

And another one from the same source...


Nicola Benedetti: from prodigy to professional
TIM CORNWELL

LIFE is lived on the run by the violinist Nicola Benedetti. Her hectic work schedule takes her all over the world, to do a concert here, a concert there and, she says, this leaves little time for the friends, boyfriends and social life that most 18-year-olds take for granted.

"To be honest, even if I met the man of my dreams, he might distract me from what I'm doing, so I think part of me actually makes sure that I don't! "My whole social life – boyfriends, friends, whatever – it's all very fleeting. I hardly ever see any of my friends. I'm lucky to have a couple that live very close to me [in London], but we still find it difficult to see each other regularly."

Benedetti's closest friend lives in Glasgow and is someone whom she has known since she was three. She describes this person sincerely as an "absolute soul mate", but it's a struggle for the two of them to meet up and spend time just being teenagers.

The day I meet Benedetti she has launched into a round of press interviews the morning after a concert in Perthshire, having flown up from London just the night before. "It was a horrific journey, absolutely terrible. I arrived late but still had to rehearse. I went to bed at three o'clock in the morning and got up at seven. If I yawn, then that's why," she says. "Today's schedule, after the interviews, I'll go home, have an hour's sleep and hopefully fit in what should be five hours of practice. I don't know if it will be."

This dynamic prodigy from Ayrshire is growing up. She was BBC Young Musician of the Year at 16 and signed a £1 million six-album recording contract at 17. Now, at 18, she is about to release her important second album, Mendelssohn, MacMillan, Mozart, which comes out on Monday.

She failed to win the two awards she was nominated for at the Classical Brit Awards this past week, but Classic FM magazine has given the album a gushing review, praising "her youthful exuberance and tender charm" mixing "eloquent, heartfelt simplicity" with "beautifully phrased playing".

With a new manager assigned to develop her path as a grown-up classical star, she is no longer a shy teenager, but has acquired the confidence of a well-travelled diva. This weekend, BBC2 is broadcasting an hour-long documentary which follows her around the world as she undertakes a punishing international schedule, from New York to Scotland.

The television crew certainly earned their air miles. Benedetti gave four performances of Tchaikovsky's challenging violin concerto with the Royal Scottish National Symphony Orchestra. From there, it was back to London for three days, off to the United States for three weeks, then to Japan for a week, and back home for two weeks. "It works in patches, really," she says.

The story she tells of her recent American tour is a similar tale of barely-beaten deadlines. "The night before my New York recital I was performing in Santa Fe (New Mexico). The next morning we were due to take a plane from a very small airport. There was snow or wind or something and we couldn't fly and the recital was the next day."

She arrived in New York at midnight, due to perform in concert little more than 12 hours later. "What an absolute nightmare: it was such an important recital, all the top people at Universal were coming. The head of management at IMG New York (of IMG Artists, her current agents) was coming, anybody that I needed to play well for.

"I woke up in the morning thinking, 'I can't do this, I can't do this', I was so tired and stressed – but then the concert went so well! It was really the highlight of the tour and I enjoyed it so much."

As she reaches for the front rank of classical stardom, Benedetti has been confronted by some critics and reviewers who have questioned whether she is being allowed to mature as a musician, whether she was launched on to the commercial market too early. She speaks repeatedly of striving for balance in her career: "With my violin, I try to strike the balance between not feeling I know it all, that I have the answers to everything, but at the same time having the confidence and belief in my own musical thoughts and ideas and ability."

"To be able to feel confident of what I'm doing when I'm performing, [to] take that initiative [and make] decisions for myself rather than waiting for somebody to tell me to do so or not. That's a really fine balance to get right."

Benedetti's debut album, released last year, shot straight to No 2 in the classical charts. It included the Szymanowski violin concerto she had played to win Young Musician of the Year, a piece with which few were familiar.

In contrast, the second album carries one of the best-known pieces in the classical repertoire, Mendelssohn's violin concerto in E minor, one with which Benedetti is inviting comparison with other performances. She says she was careful to be modest in the face of the masterpiece: "While it is unquestionably a perfect piece of music, a masterwork, and one of the best concertos ever written, it does have some kind of natural naïvete to the music that is very, very youthful, and he was obviously quite young when he wrote it.

"I really do think there is something that should be captured in that concerto by a young performer. I hope to perform it a lot more and may be even record it again one day."

The album also includes a new piece by the Scottish composer and conductor James MacMillan, entitled From Ayrshire.

"His ear for orchestration is incredible," she says, "but he's actually writing for the violin, and the different effects that you can create on the violin.

"It all works and feels very natural to do, but it's not like anything else I have done ."

After MacMillan was approached to write a piece, she expected and answer "maybe in five years' time". But, to her astonishment, he immediately said yes.

The first, more lyrical, section of the piece is inspired by a Burns song, Ca' the Yowes to the Knowes. The second part is more like a reel. The album also includes Mozart's Adagio in E and Rondo in C, along with Franz Schubert's Ave Maria and Serenade. From Ayrshire and the Serenade are conducted by MacMillan with the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields.

"It was nerve-racking deciding what was right for the first CD; to decide what's right for the second is even worse.

"I felt I had to come up with a programme that made sense as a progression from the first album, and I think the composers complement each other perfectly."

Benedetti left the Yehudi Menuhin School at 15 and now studies privately with Maciej Rakowski, the violinist and professor at the Royal College of Music, who lives in Twickenham, a 15-minute drive from Benedetti's home. When she's at home – which is often only for ten days a month – she'll go around for lessons.

Her goal is to do six hours' practice every day, though concert schedules and travel often force her to settle for an hour or two of "really focused thinking".

There are lots of conductors she would like to play with, she says: "I'd love to meet Daniel Barenboim, I mean, I'm being incredibly ambitious here. Sir Simon Rattle, Gianandrea Noseda [principal conductor of the BBC Philharmonic] I would love to play to.

"I would love to do an official evening recital at the Wigmore Hall [in London], that is something I'm really hoping I'll get to do. To do a proper concerto in the Barbican would be great."

Benedetti's busy schedule varies widely. In Scotland it has ranged from hosting a G-8 children's summit to performing for passengers on a ScotAirways flight launch. She and her mother make many of her concert decisions together, she says.

From now on she will get help from a new manager, Steve Abbott, whose resumé includes producing albums for Aled Jones and managing Hayley Westenra's career.

"I'm working with someone who will help me control things a lot more and, I think, halt my diary slightly more. Hopefully, I'll gain control over the next couple of years and be able to fit in everything I'd like to do.

"The ideal situation would be to do slightly less, and everything slightly better, and have more time to practise, more time to develop, more time to learn."

She wants, she says, to spend more time with herself, her teacher, and other musicians. Abbott has said his task is giving Benedetti access to the people who are interested in her, whether that be leading orchestras, composers, or collaborators.

She has been asked to do many more dates in Scotland than elsewhere: "There are things that come up in Scotland every couple of days. But if I want to develop a career in America, Germany, Japan, China, any of these places, I can't just stay playing Scotland all the time – I think everyone will get sick of me as well."



Roger

[postscript]

Roger,

I found the Living Scotsman fascinating. Much said there could apply to the problems i have been raising regarding Hayley for the marketing of her next stage. It is also relevant to Hayley as a parallel principle.

However, there are contrasts which I find interesting, derived from the BBC programme as much as this review.

Both women are 19. Nicola drives, has Hayley had the time yet to learn or is she reconciled to always being chauffeured?

Nicola is of a larger frame and appears more thrusting BUT is that thrusting personality due to overcome nerves as opposed to oozing greater self-confidence? Compared with Hayley she is easily agitated whereas Hayley, certainly outwardly and in all observations made about her by those `continually close to her', comes over as cool simply because she is COOL.

If Steve is around, you may get the chance to speak to her and certainly I shall book a concert when the opportunity is right for me.

While Nicola is a pleasant enough girl and classically beautiful, Hayley has the more natural interactivity with people it would seem. But perhaps time will tell.

Peter

[Steve H]

Hi Roger and Peter,

Whilst drinking my coffee and reading the papers this morning I was scanning your recent posts about Nicola, just as I saw them I looked down and there in the Sunday Times Culture Supplement was this advert for the new album, how spooky is that!



Cheers for now!

Steve H

[roger]

Ah yes, Steve. I believe timing is a great thing. You see, I waited for you to turn to the relevant page before I posted those articles!

Roger

[roger]

Thsi article is dated 27th March 2005 but has just been received as a Goolge News Alert! I don't think we have seen it before and it is very informative so I will post it anyway.

From living.scotsman.com



Going for the world record
Sarah Jones

JUST when you thought Nicola Benedetti couldn’t possibly trump her achievements of the past 12 months, one look at her schedule from now until September makes it clear that the success story of last year’s BBC Young Musician of the Year has barely begun. This January she secured a record-breaking £1m recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon, and her debut album, released in May, contains tracks written especially for her by major contemporary composers including fellow Scot Craig Armstrong, of Moulin Rouge fame. Add to that three tours to the United States and Mexico, and an Icon of Scotland Award at next month’s Tartan Day, and you might get an inkling of why Benedetti is on the cusp of becoming a huge star.

Of all the success stories to have emerged from the BBC’s Young Musician stable, none have secured a record deal as quickly as Benedetti, for so much money, and none have released a CD so promptly. But when we meet in an office off Carnaby Street in London, despite the money and the glitz, what Benedetti is looking forward to most is her series of concerts with the Edinburgh Youth Orchestra next week. The fact that it gives her the chance to build on her recent Scottish tour of schools for the Sargent Cancer Care Practiceathon, and to work, unusually, with musicians her own age, delights her.

She has had a hectic few weeks, and the pace doesn’t show much sign of relenting. On Wednesday she rose at 5.30am, spent the morning in a two-hour interview with Classic FM, did a photo shoot, did a one-hour interview for this paper, followed by another photo shoot, before going home at 6.30pm to practise. Too many days like that and the press might start taking responsibility for any bum notes in Benedetti’s ever-expanding repertoire.

Benedetti hasn’t been home to her Scots-Italian family in Ayrshire in three months. "I’m going home on Friday and it’s the first time for ages that we’ll actually have a week and a half together, all the family," she says. "I’m so excited about it. It’s not happened since Christmas. And Christmas was just before my first recording so I was in another world. I would lock myself in a room practising all the time, and my sister complained so much. She was like ‘Niccy, you’re at home, but you’re not really at home’."

When Benedetti gets animated, she leans slightly forward, her long-fingered violinist’s hands flicking the air around her. She is ensconced in the embrace of a plump white sofa for our interview, and adopts a relaxed demeanour which hides any visible trace of nerves.

Sartorially, Benedetti has a funky elegance, contemporary-cum-classic, although quite frankly she could pull off wearing a sack. Her hair and make-up are impeccable. "I get it from my mum," she tells me. "She always says it’s important to look after your appearance and she always looks great".

Benedetti Jnr enjoys clothes too. You need only look at the raft of gorgeous dresses she has worn for her various recitals - never fussy, always clean lines. "One of my friends from the Menuhin School said to me the other day: ‘It’s a shame you didn’t stay on and graduate, you missed a chance to go to the prom and wear a great frock’." Benedetti smiles: "I had to laugh because, well, I don’t think I’ve really missed out on the whole dress front, have I."

Every time Benedetti plays a concert or wins a £1m record deal or a major competition, the pressure increases to capitalise on her looks, from advertising campaigns to thoughts of making "the crossover album". Benedetti dismisses such hype, but admits she feels a pressure to prove herself twice as much because of her looks. "Oh God, yeah." she says. "If there are two musicians of the same level and one is attractive, critics will always go for the other one, because they’re seen to be more serious."

But few could deny there is substance behind the Benedetti hype. As a 16-year-old she went into the Young Musician competition a hot favourite among those who already knew her work. She led the National Children’s Orchestra of Scotland aged just eight. At 10 she debuted with the RSNO. At 11 she played the Bach Double Violin Concerto under Yehudi Menuhin in Paris and at 13 the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto. If Benedetti hadn’t won the Young Musician, she would have ‘made it’ anyway, but the win certainly gave her a boost and played its part in that £1m record deal.

So it is no coincidence that the finals-winning Symanowski Concerto features as the title track on her debut CD. The album, with its tasteful image of Benedetti on the front holding her 1751 Pietro Guarneri upside down - a clever construct that allows the instrument to temper Benedetti’s image and states very firmly the importance of the music - tells us that the initial marketing is as far from that of pop crossover artist Vanessa Mae as possible. It suggests that the control she demanded over her repertoire and ‘image’ with Universal is firmly in place. Benedetti confesses that the press launch for her £1m signing to Universal’s prestigious Deutsche Grammophon label in February was "a bit more of a big deal than I’d expected it to be", but she seems content with the end result.

Her agents are keen to promote her, at this stage, as a ‘role model for youth’. It fits with Benedetti’s desire to bring classical music to a younger audience. "What I realised last week [while touring schools] is that you hear people talking so much about how classical music doesn’t interest children, but that it’s the talk about how there is a problem that’s actually causing the problem. When you tell kids it’s uncool, they won’t be confident about playing."

But just how do the marketing people ensure that the Benedetti ‘product’ retains its serious tag? Her management, Zest PR, say they will be concentrating on promoting her on the BBC, particularly on Breakfast with Frost, BBC Breakfast and relevant children’s TV strands, anything which "deals seriously with classical music". On Radio 3, they will target In Tune, the drive-time music and interviews show presented by Sean Rafferty that deals in arts news.

For the girl herself, the real excitement is in her confirmed concert dates. They include the album launch gala at the Royal Festival Hall in London on May 15 performing with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, with whom Benedetti debuted last October in Cadogan Hall. Benedetti is also scheduled to appear at the Classical Brits on May 25. Sources have also revealed that she will play at Proms in the Park in Hyde Park on the Last Night of the Proms with the BBC Concert Orchestra and Carl Davis in September. It’s a popular event, one that mixes Broadway show tunes with serious classical works, and highlights something which Benedetti herself champions - popularising classical music.

But it will be the album that will bring her to the widest audience over the coming months, not least with heavy promotion from Classic FM. Recording the album, which contains a number of challenging pieces for a soloist, was a completely new experience for Benedetti, particularly working with Daniel Harding and the LSO. "They were so warm and nice and respectful," she tells me. "I learnt an awful lot, but I think I should have paced it differently, listened to my instinct more. I think a first recording is always going to have something quite ambiguous about it." It made her realise that what’s important in a recording is to show your creative side "because you do have a second chance if you muck something up. I think I was focusing too much on everything sounding perfect instead of really letting myself go and performing, and doing something a bit more interesting. So, that would be my criticism of the recording - that I sound like a ‘good girl’," she says and dissolves into laughter. "But as a first recording as a starting point, I’d say I’m happy with it. You have a record of where you are at that point. For me it’s important to say that that is just the beginning of what I hope to be a much longer thing."

Benedetti’s self-assessment is perhaps a little harsh. There is some fine interpretation on the CD, although she is right that there is the sense that she is holding back - the ‘good girl’ tendency that she refers to. The Symanowski performance doesn’t quite have the flair and fire it had in the Usher Hall last year, but conversely, you also find yourself listening to a quite familiar piece in which you are suddenly drawn hypnotically into the music because of Benedetti’s sheer musical intelligence.

If Benedetti sounds a little reticent about her own album, it seems less an apology, more a symptom of the rigorous creative reassessment that seems to drive her. And, of course, there is probably a bit of teenage insecurity mixed in there. She is, after all, still only 17. She turns 18 in July. It’s not just her audience who have to be reminded of her tender years. For a ‘child star’, or ‘prodigy’ as she was justifiably labelled - but one which she hates - when she won the Carlton TV Prodigy of the Year competition aged 14, Benedetti has a curiously adult image and outlook. But then she is remarkably self-possessed and independent. She hasn’t lived at home full-time since she was 10 when she left to go to music school.

Not just any music school, either. Benedetti remembers vividly her first day at the Yehudi Menuhin school for gifted musicians, 400 miles south of her Ayrshire home in Surrey. Entering the school courtyard, she heard the sound of "lots of ridiculously good violinists and cellists and pianists" wafting down from the open windows. "Before I left Scotland to go to the Menuhin School, I hadn’t heard many wonderful violinists apart from on CD. I’d been to some great concerts but not many. I realised at that moment, standing in that courtyard, that I had been a bit naive as to what the standards for top musicians really were."

In her new teacher, the Russian Natasha Boyarskaya, she found an accomplice who "was very disciplined and expected me to be disciplined, and I warmed very much to that. I enjoyed working incredibly hard and having another goal to reach each week." A year later, she was playing the Bach Double Violin Concerto under Menuhin. He had picked her out specifically. He had also, and it is a little known fact, decided to give her private lessons at his house, something afforded to very few pupils, and had already planned to conduct another concert with the young violinist. Her musical card had been marked.

Benedetti is coy about the accolade, which she rarely discusses. But Menuhin sadly died just three weeks before the lessons were due to start. How her own career would have developed had she been tutored by Menuhin is, of course, something which can only be guessed at. But, given Benedetti’s enormous drive and commitment, one can only assume she would have excelled even further, even faster. Instead of those lessons, her final work for Menuhin was playing the slow movement of the Bach at his memorial service at Westminster Abbey in 1998. Three years later she had left the Menuhin School, despite her parents’ protestations, at a point when "I started to believe in my own musical ideas rather than just copying what my teacher told me".

This determination to do things on her own terms marks Benedetti out from many of her peers. Much has been made of the benefits of money and a comfortable upbringing to her career - her father Giovanni is a pharmaceuticals millionaire and she plays a 1751 Pietro Guarneri violin - but money without talent does not bring this kind of success. "I think it would have been very easy for me not to work incredibly hard and make sure that I achieved something for myself, done by myself," she agrees. "My parents were not at all pushy. I wouldn’t say I felt the need to prove myself, that I had that realisation in my head, but that was probably what I was doing. I didn’t want to take advantage of my upbringing and I think my mum and dad have always been clear about that, which I’m grateful for. My sister and I realised from an early age we had to make our own way.

"What is tricky is just trying to work out how much to believe yourself and how much to trust all these people who are so much more experienced than you". She approaches musical collaborators with an openness that some soloists lack "I can’t stand the thought of making music with an orchestra that don’t feel they can speak to me, it just doesn’t seem natural at all. It’s a big force, an 80-piece orchestra - you don’t want to get on the wrong side of them!

"I think being a good classical musician, it’s really easy to feel like you’re recreating something that’s been done a hundred thousand times before. I’m not a fan of trying to be ‘original’ with interpretations and almost making a caricature out of a piece. I like doing things quite subtly, and seeing what comes out of me naturally. I love listening to playing that’s individual - whether it’s Menuhin or Heifetz - but not because of characteristics they’re exaggerating. It’s something that’s much more genuine, more soulful. You can hear them [the composers] through what they’re playing."

So it is still the music that is most important to Benedetti. What is difficult now, since the record deal, is not getting caught up in ‘other things’. "With Universal, there are at least 20 people I could talk to about something to do with my recording or my career at any time," she says. "I want to retain control, but I’ve got quite a busy concert schedule and, at my age, having to learn lots of new repertoire as well, everything takes up time and I don’t want to miss anything. I think the only way to get round it is to do everything steadily. It’s my work and I love it, and I think as long as I have a balance, I’ll be happy playing the violin."

Nicola Benedetti performs with the Edinburgh Youth Orchestra, at the Usher Hall, Edinburgh (0131-228 1155), Saturday, 7.30pm; the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall (0141-353 8000), April 3, 7.30pm; the Music Hall, Aberdeen (01224 641 122), April 5, 7.30pm. The album, Szymanowski: Violin Concerto No 1, is released on Deutsche Grammophon, May 9

[drew]

For any fashion conscious Ulstermen (persons), Nicola is appearing in the Belfast Edition of BBC Proms in the Park on 9th September.

www.bbc.co.uk/proms/pitp/belfast.shtml

(PS. Which venue is Hayley going to be at this year? It would be so nice to hear her duet with Vittorio Grigolo.)