Scottish Music and Nicola Benedetti
Nicola Benedetti is a charming genius. She
began playing music aged 4, and she told the BBC programme The Cultural Life that she first learned violin using a Suzuki Method,
while a child living in Ayrshire. With Suzuki,
you learn to play a tune immediately: so you begin with MUSIC and not with
sterile scales. Since the violin can be rather screechy, learning a tune is important.
Personally, I was given musical scales to practise at school, aged 10. I
learned nothing about music, and my piano lessons ended within 6 months. My
kids learned piano using the Suzuki Method, and they can still play tunes even
though they no longer play the piano. Thank you, Mrs Atwood! Of course I am NOT comparing my children with
Nicola Benedetti, who is one of the world’s greatest violinists. At age ten, she went to the Yehudi Menuhin
School in Surrey, in southern England – tough to be sent so young to a
“boarding school” .... even if the musicality of Menuhin and their shared passion of
music carried her through. Menuhin was possibly the greatest violinist, and the greatest music teacher, of the 20th century.
Benedetti led the National Children's Orchestra of Great Britain at the age of eight; she had passed eight years of musical examinations a year later.
With my friends Alan and Margery Falconer, I went to hear a Nicola concert in Glasgow, playing Vivaldi with some of the Scottish string musicians who are playing in this version of Vivaldi: a delightful short recording (even worth seeing for her very spectacular dress).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpbpaivtKas
Here is Nicola Benedetti playing Loch Lomond at the spectacular opening of the 2021 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYn61MHU_QY
Like Nicola, I am very interested in music (and dance) education. Every child should play an instrument. If they can do it in Venezuela (and they do), they could do it also in Europe.
And every child should learn to dance.
Dance is a physical expression of music.
Nicola's motto is "Enhance your own ability, be the best you can be – but don’t keep that for yourself. Share it, expose it, give it and try to enrich other people with what you have managed to achieve." That is exactly how I consider my modest ability to dance. I try to dance MORE and BETTER, and I try to share with others – and especially with children - the joy of dance and music.
Nicola
Benedetti’s most famous recent recording (Grammy Award) came from her collaboration
with the modern composer Wynton Marsalis.
Try out this visit to Dallas, Texas:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl5baizlykA
and then this Violin Concerto in D Major by Wynton Marsalis:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTsAkAHMvf4
Wynton Marsalis is both composer and trumpeter: with fiddler Nicola Benedetti.
Nicola's fiddle is a Stradivarius said to be worth $5 million: a gift from a banker.
