Nicola Benedetti

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 12 January 2014

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kirsty Young's castaway is the violinist, Nicola Benedetti.

She had her first violin lesson at the age of four, and by the age of eight, she was leading the National Children's Orchestra of Scotland. By the grand old age of ten she was boarding at the Yehudi Menuhin School and receiving lessons from the great man himself.

Her big break came when she won the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition - the first Scot to win it. Lucrative recording contracts followed together with a hectic programme of concerts. Still only 26, she is now world-renowned as a soloist and chamber musician.

Of Italian descent, her family wasn't particularly musical though the qualities of discipline, hard work and perseverance meant that fun & freedom came after music practice. Passionate about the importance of classical music in education, she walks the talk, committed to developing young musical talent through charity work and masterclasses & she received an MBE from Her Majesty the Queen for these services in 2013.

She says, "when I teach seven year olds and they can play Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, I say 'that's amazing! Well Done!' And then occasionally Mum would remind me "do you remember what you were playing at that age?"

Producer: Cathy Drysdale.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Kirstie Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Disks from BBC Radio 4.
0:06.0	For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.
0:10.0	For more information about the program, please visit BBC.co.uk.
0:17.0	Radio 4. My My castaway this week is the violinist Nicola Benedetti. In the ten years
0:39.2	since she won the BBC's Young Musician of the Year competition, her rise and one imagines her
0:44.4	schedule has been relentless. Countless professional plaudits, chart-topping album sales
0:50.0	and an MBE in the New Year's Honors list. She's 26. She picked up her first
0:55.9	violin aged just four. By the time she was 11, none other than Yuhudi Menouin
1:01.0	had spotted her star talent. Only a year later she was to play at his memorial service.
1:06.5	Quite what her Italian immigrant parents made of all this will be interesting. Her father wasn't a classical
1:12.0	music buff, spending his time making a success of his dry cleaning business.
1:15.0	Her mom told her that she didn't have to play the violin, but if she was going to she may as well practice.
1:21.0	It wasn't long before little Nicola was playing for hours on end every day.
1:26.0	She says now, when I teach seven-year-olds and they can play Twinkle,
1:30.0	twinkle little star, I say, that's amazing, well done. And then occasionally my
1:34.7	mum will remind me, do you remember what you were playing at that age? Nicola, do you remember
1:39.1	what you were playing at that age? At seven years old, my goodness, my teacher was I guess quite ambitious and I was I was so
1:48.4	keen to begin tackling repertoire that I was beginning to listen to other violists. So Mozart
1:55.4	concerto I started Brooke Violin Concerto and there's no way I sounded good at
2:00.2	all playing at that age but I but I try so yeah not twinkle twinkle.
2:05.0	It was clear there for my introduction that you've achieved an enormous amount
2:08.0	in a relatively short time
	...

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