i knew very young there was no question i wanted to play the violin. there was no question that that was what i must do and had to do and wanted to do. have you played here much, nicky? nicola benedetti, welcome to this cultural life. thank you so much for having me. it's an absolute pleasure. you were born and brought up in north ayrshire. what are your earliest musical memories at home? what memories do you have of music being played at home? the bee gees and abba. later on, good dose of shania twain. that was all my dad's taste. my mum definitely had a kenny g record. um... she... laughs saxophone? they'll kill me for saying all of this quite like this, but it's the truth! both of your parents were born in italy, weren't they ? yes. was it an italian household culturally growing up? it's a good question. i would say both parents assimilated very concretely and quite deliberately with scottishness and scottish culture, but they also came over very young. my mum was three years old. an italian—speaking three—year—old with an italian mother and scottish father. um...came over to scotland and, er...was sort of banned from speaking italian quite quickly. it was considered to be detrimental to her education and all sorts of things. we know better now. so my mum lost most of her italian, um...and it was a very scottish upbringing from that moment forward. and my dad, he came over when he was kind of ten or ii. came over without his parents. had a rough time, you know, adjusting to such a different culture. it was a good, healthy mix. but as far as mealtimes go and food, we were italian all the way. you mentioned you started playing the violin at the age of four. yeah. what started you off? so we had a very strong suzuki—method institution within ayrshire. they had an incredible sort of routine of how to not only encourage the young people to start, but the method in itself is really... it sort of predicated around the idea of the inner ear. so although you're learning to read at some point and you're learning to play an instrument, which, as you know, is incredibly complex and can be a slow, torturous process, especially violin, which sounds awful at the beginning. with this method, you're learning tunes immediately. and therefore, it is music immediately. it's not a whole load of technical work before you get to play a tune. but it came naturally to you. i mean, your earliest memories are of music being made and it feeling like it was something you should do? i think that i had an intensity towards the music itself, and a real ability to want to express that. there has to be some impetus and purpose that's attached to anything you're then going to do for that long. and for me, it was the emotional music, it was things that were moving. i was moved to tears by pieces i was learning when i was as young as six. um...that was the pull, and, er...the thing that made me want to go to my violin each day. it was the feeling that you're able to experience yourself and give to other people. that was... it was like a pull. i wanted to go back to that all the time. it may have felt natural to you, it must�*ve been a huge on this cultural life, i ask my guests to come up with the most important experiences and influences and cultural turning points. you've chosen brahms' violin concerto. when did you first hear it? when i was probably around seven. my, er... we had to drive to and from school and my mum got her hands on some recordings of maxim vengerov. we started listening to these long works. brahms' violin concerto�*s like, a0 minutes' long. so it takes a while, especially for a child of that age, and even for my sister, you know, at 11, i2 years old, um... to...to have the kind of insight and patience. and my mum was learning what she was listening to alongside us. she got us into this routine ofjust kind of listening over and over to certain pieces. and we would do a lot of it in the car. and before long, both me and my sister had worked out the shape of what the story was that was being told by brahms. and, so, we would come to look forward to this moment and to that moment, and we would come to, um...like, be so moved by this moment and then be so excited by this moment. like, for instance, the end of the first movement, it was like listening to magic for us. but it was like listening to magic of something that we were also trying to do. so the level of sort of ingrained in our mind of, like, it's actually possible, if we do enough work, to do that. that first moment that you experience that never leaves you. why this one in particular? why is this the one? because...it�*s...it�*s not always the one that's chosen by violinists as the obvious one to play, is it? i think it started my lifelong love with brahms. i can't go to a single brahms' symphony without crying four orfive times. like, ijust can't do it. it doesn't matter what kind of performance it is, the level of the performance, how many times i've heard it, it's just... i think there's a quote about brahms that talks about smiling through tears. and i think, er...it's exactly... it's what happens in the coda moment of most of brahms' works. just before the very end, you have this little moment that is... it captures his, um... like, tragic sadness. and he had so much humour and so much positivity and so much love to give people. brahms, for me, isjust one of the most heartbreaking, um... expressions of that complex human emotion that i've ever come across. when did you first play brahms' violin concerto? i came to brahms' violin concerto pretty late, actually. it was probably, um...about seven years ago. um...so i got through all my teenage years without playing that violin concerto. it was one, alongside beethoven, that was really hyped up to be something that you shouldn't really attack or address until you're, i don't know, 60 years old. not quite, but, you know, mature to a certain degree. it has a kind of patience and gravitas and drama and, um. . . maturity to it that i think is probably better, um... better addressed later in life. and yet, you had become the leader of the national children's orchestra at the age of eight, i think. that must have felt like... and the youngest person to lead the orchestra. the youngest is eight—year—old nicola benedetti, who will lead the orchestra. i've been playing for four- years and i decided to take it up because my sister started and i thought i would like to play, as well. can you tell us a bit about what you'll have to do on sunday? well, just, like, make sure all the first violins - are in time, and be— with the conductor all the time and things like that. that must have felt like a huge responsibility at that age, wasn't it? i think i was too oblivious to feel the sense of responsibility. i mean, i was well prepared. iwas, um...probably quite nervous. i think i was pretty nervous. that was the first time i'd been away from home for several days on a residential course, so, um... i remember the... i was going to say lady, because that's what she seemed to me at the time, that was sitting next to me. she was “i! and that was, er... i felt sort of intimidated by that. i don't think my feet could properly touch the floor. but... iwas... i remember being told off once or twice for chatting to the person behind me, misbehaving. i remember there being one particularly difficult passage of music that i had worked out, like, a really complicated, like, finger pattern for, alongside my teacher, and i had to turn around and play the whole thing slowly for the whole first—violin section, and... but, i mean, at the age of eight, how much sense of responsibility do you really have? i was oblivious, kind of, and i was particularly oblivious the minute i started playing. so i could be kind of running around, going crazy backstage, and then my mum would be, like, "you've got to do this ina minute. focus." and then, when i would play, i would be very focused. what did the experience of playing with the orchestra at that age teach you? what did you take away from that, do you think? it's just. . . it's just unreal. there is nothing like the feeling of playing in a full symphony orchestra. and when you have grown to love certain pieces of music and then you literally hear that come to life with a group of 90 people, i mean, it's like a wave that has its own momentum and life to it, and all these voices talking to each other within such a mass group. and being part of that sound, helping to make that sound... yes. you must have known at that age that this was your life, this is what you wanted to do... oh, i knew very young that there was no question i wanted to play the violin. like, really very quickly. even going to music school, for me, which was a difficult thing to do. i was incredibly homesick and, er...sort of didn't make friends immediately, and all kind... was with a very strict, difficult, um...er...teacher. i still, there was no question that that was what i must do, and had to, and wanted to do. and you went to the yehudi menuhin school in surrey between the ages of ten and 15. i think you played at his funeral, as well, didn't you? mm—hm. what influence did he have on your playing and your musical life? well, yehudi menuhin was one of the...voices that i developed an understanding of after going to the school. i listened to a little bit of his playing just in the months before going, but, er...i didn't have enough cultural surroundings to understand what i was listening for and how to listen. that whole development of a culture of listening and how to hear into something is something that i really learnt with a...with a shock at...at...at menuhin school. because i was surrounded by an entire environment of people my age and older that had grown up with a different kind of listening experience. so being around others and hearing menuhin's playing, i began to understand what it was he was saying through his playing. and i still say that his recordings were, and are, some of the most, like, profound and natural and...just, like, elevated expression through a violin. he...he...he�*s a musician first, violinist second. he just had this unbelievable natural ability with his instrument. but more than anything else, he is singing through his instrument. it's...it's a...it�*s a warmth and a vibration that is, you know, it's. .. yeah, i could talk about that for a long time! another big experience that you've chosen for this cultural life is meeting the american composer and trumpeter wynton marsalis. he wrote a violin concerto for you, which was premiered by the london symphony orchestra and then recorded in 2019 by the philadelphia orchestra. how did that composition process work? how involved were you? oh, i was very involved in... ..violinistic things. i maybe suggested a few things. he would say that i sent him pages and pages of suggestions, but they were extremely specific. like, "can the flute be changed to pianissimo here?" it was almost always to get orchestral musicians to play quieter so that you could hear me. but... you felt you were being drowned out? i'm sure you couldn't hear that in the hall. you could hear it? do you remember that specifically? everything you couldn't hear, i marked in the score and said, "you cannot hear it". what about that? what was the problem with that, if you had to analyse it? first, you start with the... well, the first problem is that you can't hear me. that's the first problem. i mean, that's the plight of any violin. one violin against a bunch of trumpets and trombones. like, if you put those two instruments in herejust now and you got us both to play, the violin would be obliterated. but i think the key for him was to get some sort of advice and guidance on the things to do with the instrument that he was least experienced in. but wynton's loved the violin forever, and he knows a lot about the violin. loves fiddle music, loves the, um...kind of celtic traditions of playing. i mean, knows, to a pretty high degree, music from all over the world and, certainly, the violin's place in the world, so... there are passages in that concerto which draw on scottish folk music, in fact, aren't there? yes, there are. so much of your repertoire is written by people from distant past. what is the difference when you're working with the living composer? the difference is you can ask a question! you can say — you can say, "what did you mean by this and can i please change it? but i would say the experience with wynton was very unique. like, it was a very personal interaction and a very sort of continuous back—and—forth from both of us in corners of the earth writing, you know, him sending me — he does everything by hand, so a handwritten three bar, you know, scribble, like, "could this go instead "of this, or could this instead of this? "can you try this?" i would do a voice note recording, send it back to him so that he could hear was the effect was like. and a significant amount of your musical time is spent in musical education and taking the community benefits of music to those from less—privileged backgrounds — as wynton marsalis has done, as well. was he an influence in that aspect of your career, do you think? well, it's interesting because i actually started doing things like that before meeting him, a couple of years before meeting him. but you saw him as a kindred spirit? absolutely. it was more that — a kindred spirit. he will always say to me, "don't wait. "a lot of people just take care of themselves and their career "until a certain point and then, start the giving back. "don't wait. "do these things whilst you're young. "you have the relatability for those young musicians "and you have good ideas at this age. "just do it." you've started your own foundation and your own teaching projects, haven't you? yes. so, the benedetti foundation was begun in 2019, which seems very recently, but we've done a lot of work since then. so, we put on these sort of mass workshops which has every single level from real beginners to teachers who have been teaching for 20 years and tried to kind of bring that sense of collective celebration of music, participation and appreciation. nice and gently, and slowly... for us, it'sjust a continuous sort of readdressing of how can we revolutionise what music education actually looks like to make it as visceral and impactfuland — and — and relevant as possible? but at the same time, really upholding the incredible traditions of instrumental music and music in education that's been in this country. cheering and applause. what impact can music education have on those young lives, do you think? well, it deals with the invisible parts of us that a lot of education does not really deal with. so, thoughts, feelings, how you actually communicate. and it's the things that are hard to quantify but when you think of problem—solving, dealing with difficult emotion circumstances, they are, in a way, the most important skills to learn. more recently, you've been working with a young british composer mark simpson. he wrote a concerto for you, as well. how did that process differ to working with marsalis? mark is absolutely one of a kind. i have loved him, his musicianship, his playing, since he won young musician of the year. the 2006 bbc young musician of the year, mark simpson. cheering and applause. i met him that year. i handed over the prize to him. had you won it the year before? yes. so, i've known him for a long time. and he has the capacity to delve very deep inside the human condition and suffering and is willing to sit there in order to write music and express music, and that's what he does. he sacrifices a lot. and this concerto born out of lockdown. .. ..he says that he actually had an idea, started trying to go in that direction and had to completely put it to bed. and it was several months ofjust torturous being unable to get out what he needed to say. he said it was the most intense compositional experience he's ever had. to learn that piece was, i think, the most intense. without any comparison, really, the most intense experience i've had of getting to learn any piece of music. this has been a rough 2a hours with a huge reality check on how lacking in absolute preparation i am. can play a lot of things in my own time really slowly. that does not count. you've been online a lot, haven't you? teaching people to play the violin and opening up your process, and sharing — i suppose it's just reminding us that you're always learning. yes. every day, i would share my practice on — mostly on instagram. one and two, and three and four, and... upbeat recital. just, i cannot play this today and i have to play it in three weeks' time! just kind of putting it out there into to the world. why, though? was that because of lockdown? because you... ? well, it wasn't because of lockdown. i think we all became much more comfortable with sharing our internal lives during lockdown. but it was, i think, the composing of a piece like that deserves to be more prominent in our society than it is. is it a frustration for you that the classical world does rely so heavily on the past? that you feel you have to persuade people to listen to these new works? i don't think it's about the past. i think there are innate qualities that we associate with classical music that require investment of time and concentration and a still environment and there's a seriousness to it that not everybody wants to experience. i think a lot of people, when they think of doing something nice, going out, doing something that's not work and not family, they want to escape and they want a lot of entertainment, they want to have a good time. and for something to have an intensity to it and to kind of enrich and change you in the process, that's not an experience everybody wants to have, which is totally fine. i don't feel quite so evangelical about it as i did when i was younger but what i do feel incredibly strongly about, and i'm kind of more dedicated to than ever, is the what is there, you put in front of people and when you put it in front of people, you contextualise that thing in a way that gives people the best chance of feeling the most that they can from that experience. the life of the soloist is all—consuming, isn't it? the rehearsals and the tours and the publicity. and you've been doing this from such a young age and been so well known on the public stage. did you ever imagine when you started out that you would get to this stage of the career — or, more importantly — that a life dedicated to music would turn out the way it has done? i think that very young, the love and dedication was such that i never questioned it. and i think there's no real moment in my life that i've questioned a relationship to music. the playing of the violin and music, it's almost like the glue in the foundation out of which, i've had endless opportunities to try to do things for people and impact something. nicola benedetti, thank you for sharing your cultural life. thank you so much for having me. voice-over: and for podcast episodes of this cultural life, | go to bbc sounds or wherever you get your podcasts. hello there. we had some lovely spells of sunshine through much of england and wales on sunday, a little more cloud at times through scotland and northern ireland with a few showers. and as we head through the course of sunday evening and sunday night, some clear skies with light winds through england. we'll see some low cloud, mist and fog developing through southern counties. more of a wind around parts of west wales, in towards the west of scotland, northern ireland. and, actually, that means temperatures here holding in the mid—teens. cooler elsewhere with light winds and clear skies. for the week ahead, we've got low pressure to the north—west, high pressure to the south—east, and that set up sticking with us for a few days. what it means is that, actually, through parts of scotland and northern ireland, cloudier skies with some showers or rain at times. the driest, warmest weather likely through central and south—east england, and then a cooling trend for all by thursday and certainly friday. first thing on monday, we've got that mist and low cloud lifting fairly smartly and then plenty of sunshine for england and wales. a few showers at times across parts of wales and the north of england. through scotland and northern ireland, sunny spells and a few showers. more of a breeze here as well from the south or south—west and heavier rain pushing in towards the highlands and islands. in the best of the sunshine, though, through parts of central, southern and eastern england, temperatures reaching the mid—20s. cooler elsewhere. this is tuesday now, and some heavy downpours across parts of the west and north—west of scotland, with low pressure once again towards the far north and north—west. elsewhere, some sunshine, and in the best of the sunshine through parts of central and south—east england, reaching 25 degrees once again, but cooler elsewhere. and certainly looking ahead towards midweek now, we still have low pressure to the north, high pressure to the south—east, but this feature here bringing some showery outbreaks of rain through parts of wales and into the midlands. if you're south of that line, still largely dry and fine, perhaps a few showers in towards east anglia. north of here, sunny spells and a number of showers, heaviest across parts of the west and north—west of scotland. temperatures again in the sunshine reaching the mid—20s, cooler and fresher elsewhere. more like mid to high teens, probably, at best. and for the end of the week, well, low pressure becoming the dominant feature across the uk, so staying unsettled across the north, drier in the south. but, actually, that warmer weather we've had being pushed back to the near continent. that's the forecast for now. welcome to newsday, reporting live from singapore, the headlines. on top of the world — spain beat england one—nil — to win the women's world cup for the first time. there were celebrations on the streets back home — as spanish fans marked their country's historic triumph. it was a sad loss for england's lionesses — but king charles praised their spirit and determination. and in other news. ecuador heads to the polls, following a presidential election campaign marred by violence and assassination. and "moscow — we have a problem" — russia's mission to the moon ends in failure. we start in australia, where the spanish women's football team are partying after winning the world cup for the very first time. there wasjubilation among the spanish players as they lifted the trophy — after beating england i—nil in a gripping final. they were joined by spain's queen leti—tzia, who was in sydney for the match with her teenage daughter. and in spain itself, this was the reaction at the fanzone

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