Laureation address: Nicola Benedetti CBE

Honorary Degree of Doctor of Music
Laureation by Dr Michael Downes, Director of Music

Wednesday 30 November 2022

Vice-Chancellor, it is my privilege to present for the degree of Doctor of Music, honoris causa, Nicola Benedetti.

Nicola is one of the most dynamic and versatile musicians of her generation, performing regularly in the world’s leading concert halls. She nonetheless remains fiercely committed to the musical life of her native Scotland – a commitment that promises only to deepen with her recent appointment as Director of the Edinburgh International Festival, and one that makes it particularly appropriate that St Andrews should celebrate her achievement this St Andrew’s Day.

Nicola was born in Irvine in North Ayrshire in 1987. At the age of eight, she led the National Children’s Orchestra of Great Britain; two years later she joined the Yehudi Menuhin School in Surrey; in 2004, at the age of 16, she came to the attention of a wider public with a performance of Karol Szymanowski’s First Violin Concerto that won her the title of BBC Young Musician of the Year, given with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra at Edinburgh’s Usher Hall. Since then, she has performed concertos with all the world’s leading orchestras, from Leipzig to Los Angeles, with conductors from Ashkenazy to Zukerman.

Her repertoire is astonishingly broad, and includes new concertos created for her by contemporary composers inspired by her playing. In 2015, with the London Symphony Orchestra, she gave the first performance of the violin concerto by American jazz musician Wynton Marsalis, a piece that showcases her versatility, with movements entitled ‘Rhapsody’, ‘Rondo Burlesque’, ‘Blues’ and ‘Hootenanny’. Only this autumn, to great critical acclaim, she gave the first performances of the Second Violin Concerto by her fellow St Andrews honorary Doctor in Music, Sir James Macmillan, accompanied by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the University’s Orchestra in Residence.

Nicola is also a committed chamber musician, performing across the world since 2008 in a trio with cellist Leonard Elschenbroich and pianist Alexei Grynyuk. In 2020 she launched the Benedetti Baroque Orchestra, drawing together freelance musicians who specialise in period performance. The orchestra’s first recording with Nicola as director, Baroque, was released last year to outstanding reviews. In preparation for this recording, she took lessons with the Venetian harpsichordist and conductor Andrea Marcon, and on the recording, she plays on gut strings for the first time. Her willingness to embrace a new approach to baroque performance while still playing the Romantic and contemporary repertoires at the highest level epitomises her flexibility and curiosity as a performer.

Alongside all this, Nicola has – to an extent very unusual, perhaps even unprecedented, for a musician still in the early stages of such a high-profile performing career – dedicated herself to advancing the cause of musical education, particularly, but not only, of the young. Building on the work she has done with numerous music education organisations – including, here in Scotland, Sistema Scotland, the National Youth Orchestras of Scotland, and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland – in 2019 she formed the Benedetti Foundation.

Despite the challenges of a global pandemic, the Foundation has already transformed the lives of tens of thousands of young musicians through the Benedetti Sessions, workshops that engage young people of all levels of ability in string playing and music more generally in an inspiring and fun-filled way. These sessions are backed up with a range of freely available online sources including the hugely popular With Nicky videos in which Nicola explains quite complex aspects of string technique in an entertaining and accessible way. She clearly understands that no matter how many people her own sessions reach, the transformation that is needed can only be achieved if teachers in schools are also equipped and empowered, and so the Foundation invests equal effort in supporting teachers’ professional development. At a time when music education in schools is under threat as never before, Nicola Benedetti’s personal commitment to its advancement is truly inspiring.

Earlier this year, Nicola’s appointment as the new Director of the Edinburgh International Festival was announced: she is the first woman and the first Scot to hold the post; she is also the second youngest director and the first to combine the position with a performing career. Such are her energy and imagination, however, that it is already clear that she will manage this daunting portfolio with the same aplomb that has characterised the rest of her career to date. She has spoken of her determination that the festival will engage audiences without much previous experience of listening to classical music, that it will ‘reveal the connections between Scottish culture and that of the rest of the world’, and that it will convey ‘an absolutely clear and strong vision that makes people feel, “If I experience this, my life is going to be changed for the better in this moment.”’ One could not ask for a more succinct statement of the value of the performing arts, nor imagine a more impressive advocate of their worth than Nicola Benedetti.

Vice-Chancellor, in recognition of her major contribution to the performance and creation of music, to the education of young musicians, and to the public appreciation of music and the arts, I invite you to confer the degree of Doctor of Music, honoris causa, on Nicola Benedetti.