Nicola Benedetti has a huge following in Scotland, filling concert halls across the land. Not content with her brilliant award-winning playing and a busy international concert diary, she is a level-headed, bold, passionate advocate for music and music education. Recently, as Festival Director, she has been in Edinburgh shaping the 2024 programme and receiving the prestigious Edinburgh Award. The Benedetti effect is making a practical difference: last weekend she was working with hundreds of children from schools in and around the city through her own Benedetti Foundation, SCO cellist Su-a Lee joining the team. At this Scottish Chamber Orchestra concert, Benedetti had a surprise up her sleeve in Beethoven's Violin Concerto in D major.
Standing aside from the Viennese themed programme, the opener was a Strum, a filmic piece for strings from American composer Jessie Montgomery. Rhythmic propulsion came from a pizzicato string element passed between sections while others played wistful longer themes. Originally for string quintet, the work was revised for more players, the SCO directed by the leader Benjamin Marquise Gilmore making the most of the extra heft with exciting syncopation, cross rhythms and bite. The yearning themes gave way to joyous celebration, the forest of accented down-bows crackling with energy.
Mozart’s Symphony no. 34 in C major helped establish his name when he moved from Salzburg to Vienna. Gilmore and his players gave a wonderfully organic performance, period horns, trumpets and Baroque timpani producing what is now a distinctive SCO sound world. The opening Allegro was lively, clear and detailed, the delightful two oboes providing perfect texture. Interweaving strings set the tone for a dreamy central movement for strings and bassoon, smooth and light playing with airy space to let the music wander. Gilmore wound the tension up, taking the final Allegro blisteringly fast, oboes and bassoons pointing up phrases and exchanging themes to and fro with the strings. In a finely judged performance covering a whole range of emotions, delicate moments emerged in periods of calm, but the players clearly enjoyed the big tuttis which were brave, dynamic and fearless.
Benedetti’s relationship with the SCO is not the formal ‘players and soloist’ approach but much more of an organic ensemble, the strings forming a tight horseshoe around the soloist, Gilmore leading the orchestra, the arrangement a crucible of creativity. Five taps on the timpani is a strange beginning, and a long wait for the soloist as themes emerge, Benedetti taking a muscular interpretation at first, dissolving into light gossamer as she floated her high notes, completely alive to the textures from the orchestra. The surprise was her own stunning cadenza which reinstated interjections from the timpani from Beethoven’s piano version of the work, Louise Lewis Goodwin’s tasteful Baroque timps adding colour to Benedetti’s solo before the full statement of the theme with Gilmore’s band now confidently driving it along. The central Larghetto cast a solemn spell, woodwinds in mellow accompaniment, Benedetti embracing the darkness, taking the music to an astonishing delicate pianissimo with distant horns a heart stopping moment.
The famous Rondo was full of bounce and energy, woodwind chattering, strings fiercely committed and the natural brass adding an edge. Benedetti made it look easy with a thrilling performance full of dynamic changes and an exciting finish. This had the feel of a genuine ensemble piece, a true partnership between soloist and orchestra making the music in the very fine acoustic of Perth Concert Hall sound fresh as paint, a fine midpoint as the SCO reaches the midpoint of its 50th season.
