Benedetti lauded for Atlanta Symphony Orchestra debut

Matthias Pintscher leads the ASO and guest artist Nicola Benedetti Thursday night at Symphony Hall (Photo credit: Jeff Roffman)

This month, Nicola Benedetti performed Beethoven's Violin Concerto with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra under the direction of guest conductor Mattias Pintscher. The program also included a piece by Pintscher himself in addition to Brahms' Symphony No. 2.

Jon Ross from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution raves,

"A return to Romanticism in the form of Beethoven’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D Major appeared as a gut punch of rich, textured sound.

Benedetti has a crisp, centered violin tone that shines in the high register, and she fearlessly navigates to the top of the instrument’s range, hitting stratospheric notes with authority and swaggering vibrato. Beethoven’s writing is full of demanding violin passages, and Benedetti flew through these with confidence.

Benedetti clearly enjoyed playing with the ASO, bobbing her head along with the music during lengthy introductory passages. During cadenzas full of double-stops, she was at once a joyous fiddler, percussively attacking a folk tune. Perhaps some of Pintscher’s demonstrative enthusiasm rubbed off on the musicians; during particularly vigorous passages in the concerto, the conductor hopped up and down on the podium, a physical rendering of musical attack."