This album is a gift for audiences I have known and been supported by for over 22 years. People, of all ages from across the UK and around the world, who share with me a deep love of classical music and the violin. People whose children I have taught after concerts and whose curiosity of the arts I share. This is a thank you to you.

This selection of music combines warm and uplifting virtuosity with seductive romance, and we have discovered an innocent sweetness in music and sentiment I think we could all do with a bit more of. This album can provide an intimate listening space removed from the chaos of the saturated world.

The ensemble combination of violin, guitar, accordion and cello came to me in the middle of the night. The standard violin and piano duo has a formality I knew wasn’t right, and this line-up of instruments delivers a communal, conversational “café-appropriate” sound. A sound with the flexibility to work across genres, cultures and performance environments.

The guitar and accordion are beloved around the world, and in the masterful hands of Samuele Telari and Plínio Fernandes these intelligent, creative arrangements have breathed new life into virtuosic violin classics and seductive, lilting mélodies. The cello—an instrument I secretly wished I had learnt as a child—brings an indispensable resonance, a grounding and, in the hands of Thomas Carroll, an irresistible soulfulness.

Our first rehearsal—given we were tackling brand-new arrangements for the first time—had a higher dose of anticipation than is normal. But as we tore through one arrangement after another, we became increasingly bound as a group. We discovered the humour, textural wit and instrumental virtuosity of Stephen Goss’s Carmen Fantasy. We indulged in the conversational polyphony and sweet sonority of Juliette Pochin and James Morgan’s Sicilienne. We were challenged and inspired to bring our best playing to the integrity of Paul Campbell’s Farewell to Stromness. We searched and gazed our way through the layering of Simon Parkin’s tender Beau soir. And I was hypnotised and compelled to follow the stillness, darkness and present-ness of the formidable Brìghde Chaimbeul.

Although this formation of musicians, the combination of their instruments and the written arrangements were all brand new, things always have a way of coming back around. And for me this is particularly true of my time at the Yehudi Menuhin School. As we began our first play-through for a small invited audience in order to test out this eclectic mix of pieces in front of a real—not just imagined—public, I realised just quite how much relevance this programme has to that time in my life. I learnt all the virtuosic pieces for the first time when in my early teens at the School, studying with professor Natasha Boyarsky. The first time I tackled a technique called “fingered octaves” (using alternating pairs of fingers for each successive double-stop) was in Wieniawski’s Polonaise de concert (1852), learnt aged 13. The first time I attempted a tremolo (bowing very fast with very little bow to give a shivering, exciting effect), which we aptly called “as fast as possible till your muscle tires”, was in Sarasate’s Navarra (1889), learnt aged 12. And the first time I learnt to trust muscle memory from hours of practice, accepting I had to play passages much faster than my brain could think, was in Sarasate’s Carmen Fantasy (1881), learnt aged 14. I acquired not only the fundamentals of technical playing, but also understood how to deepen the fire, passion and sonority of playing and interpreting music. As young students, our minds were filled with elaborate tales of the composers we played. Take the wild and formidable Wieniawski: a musical prodigy and polymath in the truest, deepest sense. Composer, virtuoso, showman and genius, his unruly, unpredictable nature combined with his prestige and sophistication conjured up colourful, wild images in my young mind. Then there was Sarasate’s noble, somewhat aloof demeanour: his blinding virtuosity, technical skill and relentless touring schedule served as an inspiration for many an hour of practice.

But as Plínio, Samuele, Tommy and I continued to address these pieces this time around, each time we’d begin I became increasingly comfortable with really playing within a group. I was struck by the innocent, romantic purity of the music: charm and delight and smiles and uplift and so, so many opportunities to enjoy ourselves.

When my good friend, the uniquely insightful musician Yume Fujise, joined us for the Navarra violin duo, this enjoyment only deepened. As you listen, you will hear quick decisions leading to shifts in rubato, colour and phrase emphasis. Perhaps you can even hear us smiling and laughing as we pushed our tempos to the limit—not to mention that closing tremolo until muscles ache—and gave our all, interpreting the Northern Spanish jota dance.

But although a fun, fulfilling yet challenging time was had in tackling all those notes and basking in all that charm, it is the slow, luscious, emotional writing that has had my heart from my first days learning the violin. It’s therefore unsurprising that there’s no shortage of the latter on this album.

I would love to believe the Sicilienne, written in the earthy key of E flat major, was composed by the pianist and composer Maria Theresia von Paradis (1759-1824), blind from a young age and uniquely gifted. But this is sadly untrue. In fact Samuel Dushkin, a 20th-century violinist who thought a romantic “rediscovery” tale might bring extra attention and notoriety to this music, claimed to have unearthed the lost “Sicilienne by Paradis” for the world. In actuality, it is an adaptation by Dushkin—though quite a significant one—of the Larghetto from Carl Maria von Weber’s Violin Sonata Op 10 No 1 (1810). I’m sure the false attribution helped Dushkin with the initial popularity of his Sicilienne, but its continued beloved status has little if anything to do with that. It is the tenderness, sweetness and sincerity of the piece that has us all still playing it, singing it and being moved by it. This arrangement by Juliet Pochin and James Morgan, with its interwoven lines and mastery of register and texture, was a joy to learn.

Estrellita, written by Mexican composer Manuel Ponce in 1912, and Farewell to Stromness by Peter Maxwell Davies, written in 1980 in protest against a proposed uranium mine in Orkney—both arranged by my good friend Paul Campbell—along with Beau soir, a mélodie penned by a 16-year-old Claude Debussy in 1878 and arranged here by Simon Parkin, all share a sentimentality, a romanticism and a longing and nostalgia for times gone by. Manuel Ponce speaks of the pain and anguish of someone asking their all-seeing guiding star above whether their love will ever be requited, and Paul Campbell’s string writing is sumptuous and full while retaining the song’s simplicity across all four instruments. The same can be said for his treatment of Farewell to Stromness. I’ve played this piece with a variety of forces, memorably in an arrangement for strings with violin and viola solos that I toured with violist Lawrence Power and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra—they would be the final notes played for an audience of real people before lockdown during the pandemic. Here too, Paul’s arrangement expands and deepens this “simple” song, thickening and dramatising the central section and inspiring a generally slower tempo. Beau soir advises us “to savour the gift of life while we are young and the evening fair”. Its subtlety is always difficult to interpret, but the challenge is even greater with four diverse instruments serving very different purposes. Of all the works on this programme, this one probably saw us experiment with the most wildly different approaches.

I fell in love with Bloch at the Menuhin School: in my secret desire to play the cello, through the abundance of cellists around, and with the amount of Bloch’s music that was being played. I remember hearing Prayer for the first time in a lunchtime concert and wondering why I’d never come across this sound before. The theme’s recapitulation is assigned by our masterful arranger Simon Parkin to its rightful place: the hands of our cellist, Tommy, who plays it with such freedom, yet integrity, after Samuele and I have done our best to match the cello’s depth and sonority.

I could not pull together a collection of music intended as a gift for audiences without featuring Scotland—this comes first in Farewell to Stromness, but second in my collaboration with Brìghde Chaimbeul. She is hypnotic, magnetic, virtuosic, yet internal and still. We didn’t say much to each other about what to do; I simply tried to listen, to feel her feeling the music, and to join in. And that was an honour and was enough. I’m proud of the combined result, but these tracks are really about her presence. I will say, though, that although the choice of songs was guided by Brìghde and we discussed our way through a whole list of options, the Skye boat song was my request. I played it on repeat when my baby girl was tiny, and it calmed her right down. Brìghde, luckily, liked the idea. This song is therefore dedicated to my daughter.

Nicola Benedetti © 2025