Nicola Benedetti receives rave reviews for Elgar album
Nicola Benedetti receives rave reviews for Elgar album
Last month, GRAMMY® Award-winning Nicola Benedetti released her new album on Decca Classics featuring music by Britain’s best-loved composer, Edward Elgar.
In conjunction with the album, Benedetti launched her online initiative ‘Learn Salut d’Amour with Nicky’ to teach young musicians to learn and perform one of the violin’s most popular pieces with daily YouTube tutorials.
The album has received ongoing critical acclaim since its release.
Katherine Cooper of Presto Classical praised: “Benedetti’s interpretation strikes me as combining several of the qualities which made Haveron and Ibragimova’s respective approaches to those pieces so special. Like the Korngold concerto, the Elgar is a work which wears its heart squarely on its sleeve (the composer sheepishly described it as ‘awfully emotional’), and Benedetti embraces its full-throttle ardour with open arms: from her very first entry she’s generous with portamento and rubato alike, and there’s something about her rapid vibrato and lean, muscular tone which puts me in mind of the very earliest recordings of the piece, in particular the young Yehudi Menuhin’s account with the composer himself conducting.“
Steve Moffatt of the Limelight Magazine exclaimed: “Benedetti’s tone is gorgeous, full and sweet but with a nice undertone of edge. There is plenty of nuance in her playing and her intonation is spot-on on her 1717 Gariel Stradivarius. You get the sense that this is music she loves, and which loves her, and this makes for a warm and satisfying combination. Jurowski is judicious and extremely simpatico with his soloist and the playing of the English band bears out its considerable home ground advantage.“