New: Nicola Benedetti Scores Hit After Hit in Zellerbach Recital
When you open a violin recital with the magnificent but notoriously difficult Chaconne from J.S. Bach’s Partita No. 2 for Solo Violin in D minor, you’re making a doubly bold and incautious move. First, you need to get the Bach Chaconne right, which is no easy task, or else you risk undercutting the recital from the outset. Second, if you play the Bach Chaconne successfully, what can you possibly offer the audience after this summa cum laude of works for violin? Happily, in her recital of Sunday, January 27 at Zellerbach Hall, Scottish violinist Nicola Benedetti answered both of these issues with a superb – and superbly planned -- recital, which also featured her long-time collaborator Alexei Grynuk on piano. Suffice it to say that in this recital Nicola Benedetti scored hit after hit, beginning with Bach but also including Prokofiev, Wynton Marsalis, and Richard Strauss. -more-
