Prom 67: Nicola Benedetti plays Wynton Marsalis with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra conducted by Thomas Søndergård
(Picture: Mark Allan)The Scottish-Italian violinist Nicola Benedetti has come a long way since, aged 16, she became BBC Young Musician of the Year in 2004. Now an MBE and a CBE, she plays a Stradivarius, always a sign of a musician in the upper echelons of violinists. Her Nicola Benedetti Foundation supports her longstanding commitment to music education, and in 2020 she formed her own baroque orchestra. In October she becomes Director of the Edinburgh Festival; meanwhile she’s recorded 15 albums and performed hundreds of concerts. Not much time for misspent youth, then.
On the way, she’s won an unusually large number of fans, many of them present for this packed Prom with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra under its music director Thomas Søndergård. Benedetti played the Violin Concerto written for her by American jazz composer and trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, who readily acknowledges the challenge of bringing “the nuance and virtuosity in jazz blues” to a symphony orchestra.
