My culture picks: Nicola Benedetti

2 February 2018

Nicola Benedetti is one of the most famous violinists of her generation, and is about to tour the UK with her new cadenza for Beethoven's Violin Concerto. Here she dispenses some cultural recommendations for her favourite music, book and play.

Symphony No. 7 was the final published symphony of Jean Sibelius, and was completed in 1924.

Benedetti says: "It is a piece that I got to know a little when I was a teenager, but was moved to other dimensions through Scottish conductor Donald Runnicles' performance of this work. I would encourage people to listen to it because of the absolutely unique colour scheme that Sibelius manages to produce from an orchestra - and if Runiccles has recorded it, find that recording!

"There’s one great moment in particular just a few minutes before the end which starts literally within the bowels of the orchestra, such a depth and warmth of sound that builds to a great climax… it’s a moment that makes you cry."

Donald Runnicles (pictured above) recently conducted Benedetti in concert with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, during which he performed Sibelius's Symphony No. 7.

The Noise of Time, by Booker-winning author Julian Barnes, is a fictionalised account of composer Dmitri Shostakovich trying to survive in Stalinist Russia, grappling with his conscience after the state denounces his music.

Benedetti says: "I have read a lot of literature about Shostakovich - second to Beethoven he’s probably the composer I’m the most obsessive over - and I found this a fascinating read. It takes you in a simple straightforward way deep into the proposed mind of Shostakovich, but if you have read a book like Testimony, which is a lot of the composer's interviews, it seems fairly accurate to me.

"It’s a dramatised, very human understanding of what it is for an artist who has extremely strong convictions to be true to himself, trying to basically stay alive. To try to capture that is a challenge and I think Barnes did wonderfully."

The Noise of Time is published by Jonathan Cape (2016).

The Ferryman was written by Jez Butterworth and recounts the tale of the Carney farmhouse in Northern Ireland, 1981.

Benedetti says: "I recently saw The Ferryman, directed by Sam Mendes, and it was a play that I was going over in my mind for months afterwards. I just found its layers of meaning was something that played on my mind for a long time and is a story and concept I think I’ll go back to again and again.

"It touches on so many different dimensions of the most basic human interactions and family systems, but at the same time from a more mythological standpoint it had every type of representation on the stage - such as the woman that was the old bard that was harking back into these mystical tales."

The Ferryman was also chosen by motion-capture star Andy Serkis for his Culture Picks article. The play runs until 19 May 2018 at London's Gielgud Theatre. Image courtesy of Cornershop PR/Sonia Friedman Productions.

Nicola Benedetti has written a new arrangement of the cadenza to Beethoven's Violin Concerto; listen to her Front Row interview discussing the piece.

She will be performing said Concerto at selected cities in the UK, touring with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and conductor Marin Alsop, from 3-9 February 2018, before further appearances in the US and Abu Dhabi.