Interview: Nicola Benedetti - Being Benedetti

Published on Friday 11 December 2009 20:29

IT ALMOST comes as a relief to hear that there's something Nicola Benedetti isn't very good at. She's young, bright, talented, successful, so a quick scan of Benedetti's resumé can leave you feeling both inadequate and a little over-awed. Thank God, then, to hear that there's a flaw.

• Benedetti is currently in rehearsals for the Lothian Hospital Christmas Carol Concert. Picture: PA

"Out of every single person I know, both male and female, I have the least inclination to ever want to play video games for more than five minutes," she informs me down the phone from London, where the violinist now lives and is currently in rehearsals for this week's Lothian Hospital Christmas Carol Concert in aid of CLIC Sargent, the children's cancer charity of which she's a patron. "I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that I'm just so terrible at them," she says with a giggle. "So bad!"

It is a relief, too, to hear her talk a little bit more like the 22-year-old she is. Not long ago it was reported that Benedetti had been fed-up, describing the constant touring and planning ahead that is part and parcel of the life of a classical soloist as a "crazy way to live". Today, though, she seems jollier, perhaps because she is looking forward to coming home to Scotland for Christmas. "I miss Scotland very much," she says. "I'll be home for a long time this Christmas. It'll be very exciting. My whole family are coming up, so it'll be a madhouse."

Benedetti first got involved with CLIC Sargent in 2005, touring schools and making visits to its Malcolm Sargent home in Ayrshire, which provides much-needed support for children affected by cancer and their families. This year, though, her work with the charity has taken something of a back seat so that she could spend time studying in Vienna and mastering some new repertoire. "I'm planning to do a lot more with CLIC in the coming year, so this concert is a new starting point for me," she says.

She is also a supporter of the CLIC Sargent Practice-a-thon, which encourages young people to pick up a musical instrument and ask family and friends to sponsor them to practise, raising money for the charity along the way. It's something, she says, that can be a challenge for children. "Getting children to start playing an instrument is not hard. I think they find it quite exciting. But when they realise how difficult it gets and how much dedication it takes, that's the problem. I feel very strongly that you shouldn't present playing an instrument as something that's just fun and games, but as something that if you really master, you'll be able to treasure for ever."

She has spent what she describes as "my fair share" of time in schools over the past few years, and is concerned by the frenetic environment many young children grow up in. "I'm confused by this whole world of computers and the general lifestyle of children. It will be ten years at least before we really know what effect they might have," she says. "But I would say that holding something organic like an instrument and having to go through something artistic like making a sound or making an instrument communicate emotion, is good for children. It's static and concentrated. It's not this fuzzy, busy emotion that you get from playing a video game. Working out how to play a phrase takes patience and concentration. Every child should be made to go through an experience that is pure concentration. Not everything is about fun."

Discipline seems an old-fashioned word in today's let-it-all-hang-out society, but in Benedetti's case it is appropriate. From the age of five, she was doing an hour's violin practice at her parents' home in West Kilbride every day, and by nine she had passed all eight Associated Board examinations. Entry to the Yehudi Menuhin School in Surrey followed, where she soon became a star pupil. When she won the BBC's Young Musician of the Year competition at the age of 16, she quickly became the classical music world's biggest rising star, landing a 1 million recording contract at 17 and, on one occasion, performing 110 concerts in a single year. It's certainly one way to grow up fast.

Benedetti is easy to talk to, partly because she is disarmingly articulate. She is pleasant and friendly, but she chooses her words carefully, hovering over them until she knows exactly what it is she wants to say. In the past, certain sections of the media have leaped on revelations that she has a boyfriend (a slightly older man, he works in classical music, other than that she's keeping schtum), and she appears gun-shy at questions that veer off the normal topics.

When I ask her what she thinks about The X Factor, she demands: "This is not going to be the headline, is it?" I assure her it won't be, momentarily taken aback. "You'd be surprised," she goes on. "I've had my fair share of bad headlines."

It is certainly true that Benedetti became something of a victim of own success in the wake of her six-album deal with Deutsche Grammaphon. Critics queued up to say she was doing too much too soon, that she wouldn't have enough time to practise and that her music might suffer. Nowadays, such criticism doesn't seem to bother her. "The expectation of other people is never anywhere near as high as the expectation from myself," she says. "It doesn't really add any more pressure."

But she also doesn't mince her words, and when she finally gets round to delivering the answer about The X Factor, it is characteristically forthright and blunt. "Leona Lewis is a discovery that is well worth everyone's time and attention. She's something quite special," she begins, cautiously. "But there's very little new and forward-thinking about The X Factor programme. Very little of it is focused on creativity, and I think that's usually what makes pop musicians – it's their individualistic and creative streak which is unique to them. The X Factor doesn't encourage that and doesn't give them a platform for that."

She warms to her theme. "What drives me absolutely up the wall is that when I've happened upon The X Factor on TV I just can't get over the fact that what you hear is not the person singing but the person singing, plus 20 backing vocals. The whole focus is on a singing contest and yet you cannot hear that person sing; you hear them and 20 other people who have got trained voices and recorded it beforehand. It's a joke for people listening."

One thing Benedetti does have in common with X Factor contestants, however, is instant fame. While it could be argued that many teenagers today enter these sorts of music competitions merely in the pursuit of celebrity, for Benedetti, a publicist's dream with her pretty face and extraordinary talent, it was thrust upon her. It is a role that even now, six years after her name first hit the headlines, she wears uneasily.

"I don't actually consider it very much, to be honest," she says. "The only place I'm forced to consider it is in Scotland, or in the UK generally. But I think if anybody were just to have a small insight into what my daily life is like, I think they would instantly realise how it's not even a half a per cent of what I have to focus on and concentrate on."

You won't find her posing in men's magazines or advertising coffee brands; most offers that pass across her agent's desk are rejected before she even sees them. That said, she does understand the power of celebrity presence. "I just try to make things as much as possible about things that I find important or enjoyable. If being a little more well-known than other classical musicians in Scotland means that there's a guaranteed audience coming to a classical music concert, then I think that's great. But you have to put time into creating an image for yourself, and I don't put any time or attention to that."

So what is her daily life like? Does she have a routine?

"Some days it's terrible," she says, making a sound halfway between a giggle and a sigh. "I get up in the morning and I try to practise for five hours, and I just can't get there because I'm held up between phone calls and e-mails and interviews and replying to things."

She spends around an hour and a half each day on the business side of being Nicola Benedetti, sorting out future engagements, liaising with her manager and so on. "I've learned not to ignore investing that time, because otherwise you pay for it two years on, if you don't actually take the time to plan things well."

With that out the way, it's back to the violin. "I'll pretty much be practising, or resting after practising, or just about to practise," she says, giggling again.

"It's all just about practising. My whole life is hovering around what the next thing I'm doing with my violin is. The kind of instrumentalist I am means I'm constantly changing things and developing new ways of doing things. That means I really have to devote a lot of time to practising, but luckily I enjoy it, so I'm quite happy to do that."

When asked what she does when she's not practising, she seems at a loss. "Um, I don't know really. Read? Listen to music? Go out for dinner, see my friends and family because I'm often not around them very much. Go to museums, go for walks. Just mundane things really. Sometimes I go to the cinema."

She sounds sincere, but you get the sense that it's all just filling in time until she can pick up the violin again. No wonder, perhaps, that she's terrible at video games.

INFORMATION

&#149 The Lothian Hospital Christmas Carol Concert in aid of CLIC Sargent and sponsored by The Scotsman will take place at the Usher Hall, Edinburgh, on Wednesday. The concert features Nicola Benedetti and the award-winning Caritas Choir of George Watson's junior school.

&#149 Tickets are available from the Usher Hall Box Office, Edinburgh, on: 0131-228 1155. For more information please contact Hamish Alldridge at CLIC Sargent on: 01382 223937 or at: hamish.alldridge @clicsargent.org.uk

&#149 To find out more about the CLIC Sargent Practice-a-thons visit www.clicsargent.co.uk