NICOLA BENEDETTI

The sublimely talented violinist on her desert island composer, her Grammy, Elgar and cycling round Cumbrae

‘If I was stuck on a desert island and could only play one composer, it would be Shostakovich’

I was as busy during the lockdown as before it. The lockdown was a massive change, but I don’t mind being at home. It was nice not to be getting on planes for a change.

If I was stuck on a desert island and could only play one composer, it would be Shostakovich. He’s the perfect mix of someone that has the bite and sophistication of a really unbelievable mind, but who is constantly trying to connect with normal people.

My parents aren’t very musical, but for my mum it was important that we did something well – it just happened that my sister took to the violin, and I copied her. My mum had zero ambition for us to become musicians, she just wanted us to be focused and disciplined.

She was strict, and we are grateful for that.

The question isn’t ‘why do an Elgar album?’ but ‘why not?’ I love his violin concerto and his music. My teacher gave me Salut D’Amour as a six-yearold so it’s a piece I feel a huge amount of intense emotion towards from playing it as a child.

I’m really looking forward to my virtual sessions. I’ve wanted to grow and deepen the substance of what we do online because there are so few days in the year where it’s possible to have workshops for hundreds of people, so part of our accessibility is doing workshops online. There’s such a dearth of trustworthy, high quality online musical educational material, so this is a chance to meet that demand. It’s my digital missionary work.

My life is exhausting, but I don’t analyse it. It’s not a healthy lifestyle but it’s very fulfilling.

Winning a Grammy for Wynton Marsalis’ Violin Concerto; Fiddle Dance Suite was a huge honour. Marsalis is an American composer and jazz legend whose pieces are of such high quality. I dedicated so much time to learning them; I was thrilled the project was recognised.

I grew up in West Kilbride but went to school in Ayr until I was 10, when I was accepted into the Yehudi Menuhin School and left Scotland. We’re very family oriented, so we’d always be away at one or other set of grandparents, and my schoolfriends all lived quite far away, so my sense of my home town is not that full. I started playing violin when I was four and became very serious about it really young, so that took up a lot of time.

I’ve been asked to work in other musical genres but it’s just not a choice I’ve made. There’s just too much classical music to get through.

Given the huge amount of work and performing that I make sure I do in Scotland every year, I have an unbelievable sense of community here. My sense of closeness to every bit of Scottish society is as high and as intense as it possibly could be.

When I’m in Scotland I’m working, which means travelling from one concert hall to another. This summer I’d planned to spend two weeks travelling around Scotland to all the places I’d never been to. I’ve hardly been to the islands and would love to go. The rite of passage of cycling around the Isle of Cumbrae is about as far as I’ve got so far.

For information about Nicola’s virtual sessions or Elgar album (out May 15) visit www.benedettifoundation.org