Classical review: Nicola Benedetti

Published on Monday 1 June 2009 19:22

NICOLA BENEDETTI & THE ROYAL PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA **** PERTH CONCERT HALL

A FEW years ago, when she was first being hailed as one of Scotland's most exciting emerging talents, a teenage Nicola Benedetti played the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto with the RSNO. It was probably a mistake: a shaky performance suggested she wasn't quite ready for it.

The story was completely different on Sunday, however, when she tackled that same piece in the closing concert of the Perth Festival with Andrew Litton and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. How she has come along. Here was an artist completely at home with the challenges of the music. Her smiles and the sheer confidence and dynamism of her body language said everything about the performance that emerged.

Benedetti played the protagonist role with self-assurance and vigour, turning out Tchaikovsky's molten melodies with fulminating warmth and throwing off the pyrotechnic passages with gypsy-like abandon. It was the combination of these qualities that gave her interpretation both a maturity and spark.

Having the RPO at hand to accompany was an added luxury, the orchestra's support beaming brightly under Litton's rock-solid lead. But was this the definitive Tchaikovsky from Benedetti? I think not. Give her another few years of maturing, and the heated passion evident in this performance will transform into something even more explosive.

Finzi's Eclogue for piano and strings created a rather pallid preface to the Tchaikovsky. The music meanders in the sub-Vaughan Williams sense, and Litton's decision to turn his broad back literally on the audience and take the solo role himself added a visual anonymity to the musical one.

His robust vision of Brahms's Symphony No2, however, gave the concert a more rousing send-off. If textural detail and sensitivity were not priorities here, the solidity and pungency of Brahms's brass and wind writing was.