NICOLA Benedetti may only be in her thirties, but she has a long history of making a splash when it comes to classical music. She was a musical prodigy who won a place at the Yehudi Menuhin school aged just nine and was named BBC Musician of the Year at the age of 16. She has played at the Carnegie Hall and on the last night of the Proms, as well as the opening of the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in 2014. She has also set up and runs The Benedetti Foundation to encourage and sustain music education.

A Grammy and Brit award winner, she is now one of the most recognisable faces in the world of classical music and one of its most ardent and eloquent advocates.

“Music is the art of all the things we can’t see or touch,” she once wrote. “We need it in our lives.”

Born in Irvine, the daughter of a self-made millionaire, Benedetti has performed around the world and recorded a number of award-winning albums, most recently Baroque, which saw her perform the music of Vivaldi.

She was awarded the Queen’s Medal for Music in 2017, the youngest ever recipient, and has received nine honorary degrees to date.

In an interview she gave to The Herald Magazine, ahead of her appearances at the Edinburgh International Festival last year where she was selected as a resident artist, Benedetti gave her own definition of success.

“Success, I think, is clearly defining for yourself what you think is a challenge and difficult to achieve that you then can achieve,” she said.

It's as neat a summation of her own approach to life and music as any. Now she has a new challenge to take on, perhaps her greatest yet. It’s difficult to imagine she will fall short.