Page 69 - Virtual Benedetti Sessions Coverage Book

Nicola Benedetti performing at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall
ALISTER G FIRTH
By the time we met the recruiting was done and Benedetti was about to launch the foundation’s
first full year of activities. There would be six three-day workshops spread around Scotland,

England and Northern Ireland, each involving three different string orchestras for children of

various levels, professional development sessions for string tutors and classroom teachers, and

general musicianship sessions that any child could join.

“They ought to be symbolic experiences of high-octane excitement,” Benedetti exclaimed.

When she is in this kind of missionary mode her conversation takes on the same fervour as her

violin-playing. “Symbolic,” she continued, “because these weekends will show what music
education can feel like when done at its best: getting hundreds of kids together; working at

string technique as well as the basics of musicianship. They should be exhilarating for

everyone.”

And by all accounts they were — the first three of them anyway. But that was then, this is now.

A week after the third workshop, in Dundee, lockdown happened. It was quickly clear that

musical weekends for masses of schoolchildren wouldn’t be happening any time soon.

Benedetti’s 16 years of planning, her indefatigable fundraising, the inspirational energy she

poured into the events — all seemed to be for naught. The programme came to a shuddering
halt.

Or so it seemed, even to the woman herself, who also, of course, had dozens of concerto and
recital engagements round the globe cancelled virtually overnight. “Yes, but at a time like now

you have a responsibility to put your own situation in perspective,” she told me in a catch-up

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