New York, NY (Top40 Charts/ Shore Fire Media) Fresh from exploring the music of her ancestral homeland in her 2011 Decca CD Italia, violin virtuoso Nicola Benedetti now pulls focus on the music of the silver screen in her new album The
Silver Violin, to be released in the US on February 19, 2013. Inspired by her passion for the soaringly romantic Violin Concerto by Korngold - the Austrian émigré composer credited with creating the lush symphonic sound of Hollywood's Golden Age - the new album celebrates great film scores from past and present.
But the album is equally inspired by Benedetti's urge to communicate her love of classical music to a wider audience. Winner of the 2004 BBC Young Musician of the Year competition when she was only 16, the 24-year-old Benedetti is now actively involved as a "Musical Big Sister" in Big Noise, Scotland's thriving equivalent of Venezuela's El Sistema youth music program. In July of 2012 she became the first classical artist ever to perform at T in the Park, Scotland's most successful rock and pop music festival. In September, Nicola performed for the closing ceremonies of both the Ryder Cup Golf Tournament in
Chicago and was one of the youngest musicians to perform for the Last Night of the Proms in London, proving that this eight-time Classical Brit Award nominee is equally at home on a rock stage as in a concert hall.
In planning this new album, she explains, "I hope that the right combination of substance, quality and accessibility can help to introduce new people, especially younger people, to something that they might have thought was not for them. As a 21st-century classical musician, I am trying to discover where classical music fits into people's lives and how best to expose them to it. Nowadays, film is often people's only exposure to purely instrumental music, so making the connection through film seemed an obvious and effective link."
Upon release in the UK in the fall of 2012, The
Silver Violin vaulted immediately into the top of the pop charts, outselling pop star
Justin Bieber and performing better than any other classical album in that country in 20 years. The success has been critical as well as commercial, however, as The Observerconcurred that "The lush, romantic sound of Hollywood suits her well," while The Times praised her"gleaming high register" and ClassicFM said Benedetti "dazzles in her new album." About her interpretation of the Korngold concerto, Gramophone notes, "Benedetti need not fear comparison with the likes of Shaham, Mutter and Laurent Korcia, for her broadly romantic approach and genuine affection for this Hollywood-inspired concerto shine out." In BBC
Music Magazine's four star review, Erik Levi remarks "there is little doubt that Benedetti plays all the music with warmth and tenderness."
While the Korngold Concerto provides the CD's centerpiece, perhaps an even more intriguing entry point to this cinematic survey is provided by Benedetti's fresh take on
Carlos Gardel's sultry, sensual Argentinian tango Por una cabeza. Memorably used in the 1992 Al Pacino film Scent of a Woman, it became a major popular hit. To recapture that original thrill, Benedetti has chosen to record it in a recreation of the movie's evocative scoring for single strings, piano and accordion. "It was such fun to record", she enthuses. "We added a section in which we are partly improvising, trying out different effects. We had a great time with it!" Decca has created a suitably sultry music video to accompany the track which perfectly captures the longing and aching romance of the tune.
Alongside the Korngold Concerto - a 1946 work in which the composer gave fresh life to themes from some of his most famous movie scores, including his Oscar-winning music for Anthony Adverse (1936) - Benedetti includes violin arrangements of "Mariettas Lied" and "Tanzlied des Pierrot" from Korngold's 1920 "dream opera" Die tote Stadt, whose sensational double premiere (staged simultaneously in Hamburg and Cologne) made the 23-year-old ex-wunderkind's international reputation. Film maker Mike Daye created a stunning short film to Nicola's performance of "Marietta's Lied," released this fall in advance of
Silver Violin.
The poignant lament from John Williams's Oscar-winning score for Steven Spielberg's Holocaust memorial, Schindler's List - serves to remind us how much the classic orchestral sound of the Hollywood score owes to Korngold and his fellow refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe. Also, how lucky Korngold was: if he hadn't been in Hollywood scoring The Adventures of
Robin Hood when Hitler annexed Austria in 1938, the Jewish composer might well have met a far swifter and more tragic end.
Living most of his life under communist rule, Shostakovich was another major 20th-century composer whose career was blighted by political oppression, with his works being officially banned on more than one occasion. But, while his symphonies, concertos and string quartets are now a mainstay of the international concert repertoire, many western listeners are far less aware of his status as the USSR's greatest film composer. The Romance from the 1955 period drama The Gadfly is presented here along with the equally lyrical Andante from the 1932 Soviet propaganda film The Counterplan, which Benedetti describes as "a real discovery - like a Mahler symphony in just two and a half minutes".
From more recent and largely happier times come the achingly beautiful "My Edward and I" from Dario Marianelli's music for Cary Fukunaga's 2011 adaptation of Jane Eyre, and extracts from
Howard Shore's Golden Globe-nominated score for
David Cronenberg's 2007 thriller Eastern Promises, for which Nicola herself played the solo violin on the original soundtrack. Contemporary British cinema is represented by Nigel Hess's haunting main theme and specially-composed Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra from Charles Dance's 2004 hit Ladies in Lavender.
For more on Nicola Benedetti's
Silver Violin click here to view an EPK about the making of the album.
