Page 105 - Virtual Benedetti Sessions Coverage Book
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primary school to pensioner, with online lessons for the ability level that you select, and it’s all
free.
You can eavesdrop on several of the Zoom sessions on YouTube, where you’ll find a
community of gifted educators inspiring a love of music in the most accessible way. Yesterday’s
culminating concert, patched together from videos sent in by the participants, was a celebration
of everything the project has achieved.
Anyone can watch the Zoom sessions on YouTube
How wonderful to watch the (mostly) young musicians getting stuck into Warlock’s Capriol
Suite, and managing to hold together the complexities of Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de
Florence while in isolation. They worked wonders with Vaughan Williams’s Tallis Fantasia,
achieving something uncommonly meditative and inward considering it was recorded from
homes across several continents. Benedetti’s famous friends showed up to play through a
variation each of Paganini’s 24th Caprice, before the mass participants joined in for a specially
arranged version, an ebullient highlight.
The participants used words like “transformative” to describe the experience and, like them, I
found it pretty inspiring. Let’s hope this wonderful piece of altruism has planted some seeds that
will flourish well beyond lockdown.
The concert and supporting content can be viewed on Benedetti’s YouTube channel.
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