For the record, Scottish violin virtuoso Nicola Benedetti last performed in Santa Barbara as soloist with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in 2018, when she was still a twentysomething sensation on the rise in the classical music world. She returned to town last week at Campbell Hall, in a UCSB Arts & Lectures-sponsored appearance, at the ripe old age of 38, a mother, wife of Wynton Marsalis, and director of the prestigious and adventurous Edinburgh International Festival since 2022.
Her welcome return came in the form of what could be described as recital mode, revisited. Enter celebrated young accordionist Hanzhi Wang (who we heard at the Lobero with mandolinist Avi Avital in 2023), guitarist Plinio Fernandes, and cellist Adrian Daurov. As she told the Campbell Hall audience, after opening with the dulcet, infectious tones of Maria Theresia von Paradis’ Sicilienne, “I wanted to get away from the formality of playing with a piano and work with instruments that could be found around the world, in a café atmosphere.”
She has documented this special project on last year’s inviting album Violin Café, from which much of the Campbell Hall was drawn. She easily rose to the challenge of Paganini’s infamously pyrotechnical Caprices, as well as delving into the luminously lyricism of his Cantabile in D, Opus 17. Mexican composer Manuel Ponce’s Estrella had as a tour de force counterpoint, the delicious and technically demanding maze of Pablo Sarasate’s Navarra, with the double-playful exhilaration of a duo with cameo-making violinist Yume Fujise.
Benedetti’s geo-cultural points of cultural expression moved freely around Europe, though adhering to a logical, emotional, and stylistic travel plan. Late in the program, the radiant reflective sonorities of Debussy’s Beau Soir segued into the Hungarian goulash/flourish of Vittorio Monti’s Csárdás. Next up, Bloch’s solemn turning festive “Prayer” from Jewish Life shifted cultural locations with a crowd-pleasing finale of Spanish composer Sarasate’s treatment of French composer Bizet’s Spanish-flavored Carmen Concert Fantasy.
The program duly showcased Benedetti’s expressive and technical bravura as a violinist, with the usual violin showpiece program lineup of Paganini, Wieniawski, and Sarasate, and satisfied a broad audience’s taste with many familiar, accessible works and tunes. This digestible playlist offered standard brand music for a general listenership, distinguished by her imaginative “Café” packaging.
But in the final analysis, at least to these ears, the deepest and freshest sounds of the evening hailed from her own home turf, with a set of three Scottish folk pieces, arranged by the simultaneously adventurous and tradition-tapping young Scottish piper Brighde Chaimbeul. Lights were dimmed after intermission for the mesmerizing atmospherics of A Choille Ghrunach (air) — which she aptly described as evocative of “a gloomy forest”— leading into the feisty, festive business of the Skye Boat Song and the heel-kickingly juicy Hacky Honey Reel.
Her ready flowing virtuosity, dished out with sumptuous, breathless taste elsewhere on this program, wasn’t necessary here. But rooted musicality, on material grounded in her heritage, made this music sing with a particular power. A good, globe-trotting time was had in the violin café.
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