Nicola Benedetti plays up to her Italian connection

For all the retro-chic props, Benedetti’s trademark image is still centre stage. Masses of long dark hair, eyes made up à la Sophia Loren, shapely legs bare up to somewhere behind the fiddle case… Fans of the violinist’s glamorous side will not be disappointed. But the album also marks something of a departure for 24-year-old Benedetti: a first-time venture into repertoire that is both deeply personal and demands a new way of playing.

The personal connection is fairly self-evident. Benedetti’s parents were both born in Italy and came to Scotland as children. Despite a hearty Ayrshire accent, she herself has spent a significant chunk of her life in Italy, and still spends her holidays there. “This summer we were in Barga, where my father is from,” she says. “It’s where a lot of Scots-Italians are from, and everyone seems to go back at the same time each summer. I was constantly getting tapped on the shoulder to have my photo taken with someone from Kilmarnock or Prestwick. It was a bit much -- I mean, I was wearing wee shorts and a vest top, not exactly concert gear, but of course, it’s always great to hear a Scots accent.”

Since winning BBC’s Young Musician of the Year competition in 2004, Benedetti has been well trained in the art of the media interview. Over the phone from New York (she’s been performing on a grandstand in Central Park with Andrea Bocelli) she is cheerful but business-like: positive and polite, but also guarded, often alluding to opinions without spelling them out. Unwanted attention from fans on holiday is one such example.

When she discusses her Italian background, though, she is freer with her words. She talks fondly about Italy’s countryside, Italian personality traits (“stubborn!”), and how she recently restarted Italian lessons. “The parts of the family that moved to Scotland discouraged my parents from speaking Italian to us when we were kids. It was that generation’s attitude to immigration, I think, and when I visited Barga it made more sense. My father is typical of people who have worked hard to leave some-where so aren’t inclined to celebrate where they have left. They celebrate where they’ve arrived. Though, of course, my parents couldn’t entirely abandon their cultural habits, no matter how hard they tried.”

For one thing, I suggest, they were probably better cooks than rest of us. “You say that like it’s not serious,” she replies, “but it is very serious. For Italians, food -- eating meals together -- is the epicentre of the family. When we’re on holiday together, the only thing my family thinks about is what’s for lunch and dinner, and how and when and where we will we prepare it. My idea of a proper meal involves shopping all morning, cooking all afternoon and eating and talking all night.”

Sounds dreamy, if a little awkward to fit with life as a globe-trotting soloist. “Yeah, but anything’s possible if you make it a priority,” she says. “Even if I’ve got a million things to practise, I’ll make the effort to eat properly with friends or family. That’s part of my heritage I will hold on to.”

Turning her professional focus to that heritage is a journey Benedetti has wanted to make for years. As a violinist, she says Italian music is almost exclusively synonymous with Baroque music -- Italian solo repertoire for the instrument came in droves during the 18th century, but more or less dried up after that -- which is where her musical departure comes in. Until now, Benedetti’s core repertoire has been predominantly Romantic and post-Romantic: she won Young Musician with Szymanowski’s first concerto, then went on to release five albums featuring Tchaikovsky and Bruch, John Tavener and James MacMillan. Her Stradivarius dates from 1714, but her playing style has been of a later age, a broad sound full of sumptuous vibrato.

On the new album there’s almost no vibrato within earshot. In music by Vivaldi, Tartini and Veracini, Benedetti keeps ornamentation delicate and rapid, and allows her phrasing to move buoyantly with the music’s dance rhythms rather than weighted down in grandiose Romantic gestures. Against spruce and vigorous accompaniment from the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, her sound is significantly streamlined.

But neither is this a performance for purists. Blame it on that Italianate stubbornness, maybe, but Benedetti has refused to let “correct” Baroque performance practise get in the way of her favourite musical mannerisms. Expressive slides sneak between notes, for example, especially in two transcriptions of Vivaldi vocal arias. What’s more, Decca’s sound engineers have finished the recording with a thick reverb effect that’s usual for this repertoire; it takes the edge off the raw sound, and adds a hint of concert-hall glamour. These are details, but leave no doubt that Italia is Benedetti’s Baroque.

She flinches when I mention the word “marketing”, but still I’m curious as to what commercial line she’s treading with the new disc. There were two motivating factors behind it, she explains: her Italian heritage, and the process of finding a stripped-down way of playing. “If that means I can’t be pigeon-holed as easily, I couldn’t care less. People always try to second-guess your reasons for doing things. Usually what they come up with is far more complicated than the truth.

“It’s great to try new styles. It has been refreshing to have variation. There is an element of, well …” she searches for the diplomatic word, “familiarity about playing the same Romantic repertoire all the time.” As in, another night, another Tchaikovsky concerto? “Let’s just say that, though I’m critical of musicians who do things that aren’t artistically sound just for the sake of novelty, I’m definitely ready to shake things up a bit.”

She laughingly admits that when it comes to shaking things up, releasing a Baroque album is at the tame end of the spectrum. But her impulse to do things differently explains why the repertoire on Italia (Summer from The Four Seasons aside) is more off the beaten track than it might have been. “I went round the houses to decide what to include,” she says, “and talked through endless thematic concepts with the record company. In the end we went for musical character. None of it is polite Baroque. It’s fiery and passionate. Take Tartini’s A-minor Concerto: there’s emotional depth there -- it’s heartbreaking.” 

Benedetti performs Vivaldi with the SCO in April. Much sooner on the horizon -- this week -- she’ll be in Scotland playing Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy with the RSNO. It’s a piece that seems like obvious Benedetti territory, but she hasn’t performed it much, and never in Scotland. It’ll be a reunion for her and Stéphane Denève, the RSNO’s music director about whom she lavishes effusive praise: he’s full of positive energy, she says, and is “a fantastic combination of very free and sensitive, but confident to deliver what he believes in. I love working like that.”

Plus there’s always something special about playing in Scotland, she says, most of all because she can go home for a bit. As she reels off the commitments she’s facing this season, she admits that, yes, she feels daunted sometimes. “Every few months I have an ‘Oh my God, can I get through this?’ moment. But my family gives me good advice. And my boyfriend understands me. He’s a cellist, so knows the pressures I’m under. I rely on that support.”

Developing her Baroque sound has altered the way she approaches other music, says Benedetti, even music she’s been playing for years. “The day after recording the album, I flew to Copenhagen to play the Tchaikovsky concerto, and found I had a new sense of freedom -- a new feeling in my bones. More than that I can’t explain, because it was so organic. Something inside my muscles has changed.”

Italia is released on October 3. Nicola Benedetti plays with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in Dundee (Caird Hall, September 29), Edinburgh (Usher Hall, September 30) and Glasgow (Royal Concert Hall, 1 October); see www.rsno.org.uk for the full season programme.