Nicola Benedetti

Our guest today is the Director of one of the world's major arts festivals: The Edinburgh International Festival. She is also a world-class virtuoso violinist. It's Nicola Benedetti. In this conversation, Nicola talks to Gyles about her remarkable parents, who migrated from Italy to Scotland and through hard work and willpower created a new life and two highly talented daughters. She talks about learning to play at the Yehudi Menhuin school, and about playing at Menhuin's funeral. She talks about practice and posture. She talks about winning the BBC Young Musician of the Year, and about meeting and marrying her husband, the American trumpeter and composter Wynton Marsalis. This is a fascinating and inspirational conversation. Our heartfelt thanks to Nicola Benedetti for her time and brilliance. The Edinburgh International Festival is on until the end of August 2026. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:32Speaker 01

  This is Rosebud, a conversation about people's memories. Welcome to the party. Cue the music.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  Hello again. I'm Giles Brandreth and I'm in Edinburgh for this very special episode of the Rosebud Podcast. It's very special because I'm here in Edinburgh, part of the Edinburgh Festival, a major global arts festival. Its director, its artistic director at the moment, is a remarkable individual. The first woman artistic director since the foundation of the festival back in 1947. It is Nicola Benedetti. And Nicola, she lets me call her Nikki, which is nice. Nicola Benedetti is here in Edinburgh because of course, as the director of the international festival, the programme of events, concerts, theatre, it's extraordinary programme, dance.

• 1:45Speaker 01

  It continues right to the end of the month of August. And if you know her name, it's probably because you admire her as a violinist. She is a virtuoso violinist who has won awards for some of her recordings, who I first met when making a film about her for The One Show more than 10 years ago. We went somewhere, it was a hillside and she played for me, and indeed for the camera, but I felt it was for me, The Lark Ascending. And it was the most beautiful outdoor music I have ever heard. And I thought, you are remarkable. Obviously, she's a great violinist. She won Young Musician of the Year years ago. That's how she became a household name.

• 2:28Speaker 01

  And she's gone on to become not just a virtuoso violinist playing around the world, but also somebody who's a major figure in the world of music education, arts education, and now as the director of this international festival, a major figure in the arts world. She's married to a composer and performer. She began her association with the American trumpeter composer Winton Marsalis, when I think she was about 17. She can tell us more about that. It led to the composition of a violin concerto and a fiddle dance suite for her by him, which she recorded back in 2019. And I think that violin concerto won her the Grammy Award for Best Classical Instrumental Solo in 2020.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  Anyway, I'm thrilled to have her. Her story is remarkable and her parents are remarkable. Her being a child prodigy is extraordinary. Her leaving school, I think at 15 or wanting to, and then becoming this international figure. The names she is able to drop are extraordinary. I think you are in for a treat with a very special, remarkable individual. One of the great music people of our time. Please enjoy Rosebud with Nicola Benedetti.

• 3:55Speaker 01

  Well, this is a very special Rosebud because it's coming from the beautiful city of Edinburgh in Scotland. It's coming from the Edinburgh International Festival. And I'm in the presence of the artistic director of the international festival. I've met quite a few of her predecessors. And I've been telling her that she is certainly the most exciting one I've met, the most delightful one I've met. She is Nicola Benedetti. And she is also as well as being here in Edinburgh because of that, she is a virtuoso violinist famous across the world. I feel very thrilled to have you and thank you for coming.

• 4:31Speaker 02

  Thank you so much for having me. It's such a pleasure.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  You're into the festival now. Are you exhausted?

• 4:37Speaker 02

  I think that's an accurate depiction of how I'm feeling. My, under my eyes are feeling a little bit tender.

• 4:47Speaker 01

  The reality of it is that you were up until three in the morning, discussing possibly artistic differences or issues with some of the artists you've got appearing with you.

• 4:58Speaker 02

  That is, I didn't, I didn't.

• 4:59Speaker 01

  This is the reality, isn't it?

• 5:00Speaker 02

  We're gonna share that with everybody, but yes, that is.

• 5:02Speaker 01

  We don't know who they were.

• 5:03Speaker 02

  And we don't know, we don't know the details. I won't divulge details.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  But that is the reality of it because people think, I mean, you say this, oh, you know, it's been marvellous. But the truth is, you're up till three in the morning because what sort of things are worrying people? What kind of thing are you working on at that time?

• 5:18Speaker 02

  You know, I, I think artists that are on tour, so much of their memory of a place is also the people that they connect with and the time that they have around that stage performance. Having done it for many years myself, I know the difference in, in, in memory when you have felt like you've had a glimpse into the, the feeling and spirit and community of where you are versus just the formal, official, professional aspect, which is the, you know, the, the hotel, the backstage, the sound check, the timings, the on and off stage. We talk about it all the time at the festival.

• 6:02Speaker 02

  I'm always trying to say, you know, the, the smallest interaction with an artist, to thank them, find, even if you didn't like what they did, find something that you did like, you know? That human touch goes such a long way. And yes, sometimes that does involve sticking it out to the end of whatever their, their after-party is and, and discussing, you know, there's lots of debriefing.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  We'll come back to your role as the artistic director of the international festival in a moment. You've been up till three in the morning. As you know, I once interviewed Sir Edward Heath, who was a conductor and a musician, as well as being a former prime minister. And twice during the interview, he fell asleep. Soundly, deeply, profoundly. It felt rude to wake him up. So if you nod off, I will understand. And I'll just ask a very long question and then nudge you and hope that you say something coherent to the end of it.

• 6:58Speaker 02

  And nothing you say can make me fall asleep.

• 7:01Speaker 01

  Well.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  I will be engaged and energized the whole time.

• 7:04Speaker 01

  So let's begin at the beginning. Nicola Benedetti, born 20th of July, 1987. I have to ask you, Nikki, what is your very first memory?

• 7:18Speaker 02

  My very first memory is quite unglamorous. Waking up in the garden of my Auntie Molly. And it was a family, like it was somebody's birthday.

• 7:36Speaker 02

  And I remember I, I was asleep in the, in the buggy. Not exactly sure how old I was, maybe three or four. And all of our, we had, we had an incredible sort of cabal of really beautiful personalities of the older generation of our family. My parents were, were not young when they had me and my sister.

• 8:03Speaker 02

  And that was our, you know, that was our happiest times, was when all of those aunts, uncles, grand grandpas were.

• 8:12Speaker 01

  Well, tell us then about Auntie Molly, why you remember her. You're in your buggy, you open your eyes and there is Auntie Molly. Who is she in relation to your parents?

• 8:19Speaker 02

  She married my, my uncle George, who was on my dad's side, Italian. So my dad came over from Italy when he was 10.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  And what's he called?

• 8:32Speaker 02

  My dad Giovanni.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  Giovanni Benedetti. He comes to this country, why?

• 8:38Speaker 02

  He was sent over by his parents. Obviously, Italy post-war was a hard place to be. And their families, any industry work possibilities, everything had been virtually decimated. And there had been at the turn of the century, then in the twenties and then obviously again in the, the fifties and early sixties, a lot of migrations over to Scotland in particular.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  Why is that? Why do so many Italian families came to Scotland? Is there a reason?

• 9:17Speaker 02

  I, I think certainly post-Second World War, Scotland was slightly preferable to England. I mean, it was just slightly less destroyed. And, and, and there were very strong, you know, ties of the, the expected cafes and ice cream parlors and, and of course, being a very tight-knit family tradition with, with the Italian family setup. I think there was, there was always somebody to go to if you were sent over to Italy. And my dad was one of those young people.

• 9:58Speaker 02

  I think he was seen as, there was a lot of pressure on him to save the, to save the family, really.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  So he comes of age 10?

• 10:07Speaker 02

  Comes over age 10.

• 10:08Speaker 01

  And how does he save the family? What does he do when he grows up?

• 10:10Speaker 02

  So, well, my, my dad, you know, he, he often tells the story of going to stay with, not my uncle George, but another relative, who was a raging alcoholic and gambler, was married to a saint of a woman. And my dad had like a, a little sort of curtain partition in their bedroom. That's where, that's where he, he slept. And would hear this man coming home every night, night after night after night, having, having.

• 10:50Speaker 02

  Having ravaged the the the takings of the cafe and and spent it all on on on gambling and and alcohol.

• 10:59Speaker 01

  So they had an Italian cafe.

• 11:00Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  In where in Scotland?

• 11:02Speaker 02

  West of Scotland.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  West of Scotland.

• 11:04Speaker 02

  Irvin, various different towns within Ayrshire.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  He is drunk, the proceeds rolls into bed.

• 11:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  Next to this saint woman and your poor father is hidden behind the curtain, hearing all this.

• 11:15Speaker 02

  Who was severely asthmatic, the woman. So my dad would would regularly tell stories of of hearing her stopping to breathe, you know, and he was little 10, 11 year old without his parents, separated from his family, million miles away. And I I say all that coming back to Auntie Molly, because my uncle George and Auntie Molly were were really his saving grace. They were the one source of comfort and security and love. And I think something that made my dad feel a little bit more safe. But he obviously was enrolled in school, Catholic school, next door Protestant school. My dad will also say that he came to Scotland

• 12:00Speaker 02

  thinking Mussolini had won the war and was confronted with another religion, this absolute hatred between the two religions, between the two schools, a lot of violence, a lot of a lot of fighting, you know, Scottish youths. It was an absolute culture shock to him. But no, my dad left school at 15, very, very creative, very bright, very ambitious, started working in the cafe from the minute he arrived in Scotland, but at 15 started

• 12:37Speaker 02

  working at a dry cleaners and was always able to see solutions to problems. And I think would have actually been a great artist or musician had he been given the the the the chance. But he was just that sort of mind, that sort of spirit. He quite quickly worked his way up within this dry cleaning business and eventually managed to convince various different people to give him a small loan to buy one shop. And that turned into eventually the the leading dry cleaning business.

• 13:22Speaker 01

  He became the dry cleaning king of Scotland.

• 13:25Speaker 02

  Well, yes, yeah, yeah, sort of, yeah.

• 13:27Speaker 01

  Well done him.

• 13:29Speaker 02

  And then he's he had a whole life of of of that, really. Entrepreneurialship went into various different businesses, whether that was paper or first aid kits.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh.

• 13:42Speaker 02

  Kling film. Yeah, he was, I I'm speaking, I'm I'm saying was, my dad is still alive, but he's in his mid 80s now, and he's been suffering from a lot of health issues recently.

• 13:57Speaker 02

  But he has been full heart, full risk, full personality his whole life, you know.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  Well done.

• 14:05Speaker 02

  So definitely big, big, big, big ups and big downs.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  But clearly the big ups you've got from him. Well done. How did he meet your mother? And who is she?

• 14:13Speaker 02

  My mother, Francesca Benedetti, she came over to Scotland from Italy when she was three years old, Italian mother and Scottish father. They met at a dance. They were both great dancers. They would clear the floor, doing jive and like the whole, you know, I would say sort of Greecesque.

• 14:38Speaker 01

  Lovely.

• 14:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  And was the marriage a good one, a happy one?

• 14:42Speaker 02

  They got married after knowing each other for about 10 months. And my mom was just turned 21. My dad was 30, so quite a big age gap. And they've had a they've had a colorful marriage, let's say.

• 14:57Speaker 01

  Well, that's good. A little bit of up and a little bit of down.

• 14:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, I would say they're passionate Italian. They're both incredibly fierce and in a way fearless characters, extremely bold, extremely passionate. And they've sort of led every part of their lives in in that way.

• 15:16Speaker 01

  Were you conscious of the tempestuous nature of their marriage when you were a girl?

• 15:21Speaker 02

  Oh, nothing was hidden in our family. No. So we're still that way now. We we none of us understand sort of decorum in in in other people's families.

• 15:34Speaker 01

  Very interesting to me, because I would have in my family, I'd have no idea about what was going on beneath the surface. Give me an example of that, of the tempestuous nature, and you observing it or being part of it as a little girl.

• 15:46Speaker 02

  So my mom is fiercely intelligent, capable, great cook, beautiful person, personality.

• 16:00Speaker 02

  And at in her mid 20s, stopped pursuing her career to very much, you know, sort of a lot of different things.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  Became the homemaker.

• 16:09Speaker 02

  Became very much the homemaker. And I my dad was a very difficult person, like, and is a very difficult person. He's also an incredible person, but he is he is not the one you're going to say, oh, you know, like, not a, not a, not, not a, not a diplomat, not a peacemaker. He's one that will bring full, he'll burst into a space. So of course to deal with that as as the the person living alongside that, you know, and and to manage the degree of risk that he was willing to take, whether that be how fast he drove a

• 16:51Speaker 02

  car or a boat, for that matter, or, you know, the fact that he would take, he he took her skiing, she'd never skied before, strapped these enormous big wooden planks to her, took her to the top of the like hardest ski slope and was just like, I'm sure you'll be fine. Because she was very like sporty, my mom. She ran for Ayrshire and she was very competent in that way. Like, she never tried it before. And of course, then.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  Down the mountain.

• 17:20Speaker 02

  Of course, then she like fell, ended up splitting her head open. They had to get an ambulance up to this was that that's just things that would happen constantly around my dad. You know, I mean, the number of lives he saved, getting people out of the sea, the, I mean, they they would, they would take a speedboat. Largs was our sort of closest sea, because we were grew up on on the coast in Ayrshire. And he would take a speedboat to Largs Marina and basically taught himself water skiing tricks. And there'd be hundreds and hundreds of people like standing at the side. He'd then get my mom out there. I'm

• 18:04Speaker 02

  sure you'll be fine. Try it, you know, and and speed off in this boat. And just an absolute

• 18:13Speaker 02

  daredevil, no fear. And and he lived that way financially, he lived that way on a day to day basis, he lived that way in his proximity to danger. But then, you know, he also had a very responsible aspect of his personality where he would, when it came to me and my sister, I mean, he was absolute hard line on certain dangers and but, you know, you can imagine how that was not, it wasn't a peaceful, nothing was peaceful.

• 18:49Speaker 01

  Was it happy?

• 18:51Speaker 02

  Happy in the sort of yay kind of happy sense, no, but like full of heart and and joy in a very exuberant way. High emotions were in our house all the time. And that could be good and bad, but, you know, yeah.

• 19:12Speaker 01

  This is pure Italy brought to Scotland, isn't it?

• 19:14Speaker 02

  It really is.

• 19:15Speaker 01

  Your sister is older, younger?

• 19:17Speaker 02

  She's four years older.

• 19:18Speaker 01

  Four years older.

• 19:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:19Speaker 01

  So and you and she got on quite when when you arrived? You've been friends ever since?

• 19:23Speaker 02

  Oh, yes. Me and my sister are incredibly close.

• 19:25Speaker 01

  Tell me about your first memory of music of any kind.

• 19:30Speaker 02

  So my mom's dad was a big lover of music, sort of popular song merged with folk and the Scots tradition. So I'm thinking it'd be likely something like My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean.

• 19:47Speaker 01

  Give us a moment of that to remind us.

• 19:49Speaker 02

  My Bonnie lies over the ocean. My Bonnie lies over the sea. My Bonnie lies over the ocean. So bring back my Bonnie to me. So I I would say like that, or Danny Boy.

• 20:05Speaker 02

  They would, he he played the mouth organ. They would sing. My mom had two sisters and a brother. Oh, dear. Sorry. Our brother just died.

• 20:18Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm sorry.

• 20:18Speaker 02

  No.

• 20:19Speaker 01

  No worries.

• 20:19Speaker 02

  No, it's fine.

• 20:20Speaker 01

  These things happen, don't they?

• 20:22Speaker 02

  Yeah. Oh, dear.

• 20:25Speaker 01

  Well, these aunties and uncles, they mean a lot to you.

• 20:27Speaker 02

  Oh, my God, my uncle. Yeah, 100%. He was so close to all of it. He was, yeah, like 65 as well, 67.

• 20:38Speaker 02

  So my mum's dad, he would have, my mum had two sisters and a brother and they could sing in harmony together. So in a very homespun way, my mum's brother, my uncle Tommy, who very sadly just passed away, he taught himself the guitar at home. My mum was desperate for piano lessons but dared not ask because they couldn't afford any sort of formal lessons. But I would say they had a real love for, it wasn't, it wasn't classical music, it wasn't necessarily other styles of music, but it was a love for a really good quality song.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  And why did they get you into playing an instrument? Your older sister Stephanie, she was already playing the violin.

• 21:27Speaker 02

  No, we began on the same day.

• 21:29Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 21:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, so.

• 21:30Speaker 01

  How did that come about?

• 21:31Speaker 02

  My sister, from the age of four, so when I was just born, saw someone in her school with a violin and heard somebody play it. And she started asking my mum, I want to play the violin, love the violin, love the violin. For four years, she asked to play the violin. And obviously, my mum had a little baby. My mum's sister was also diagnosed with cancer during that time and very tragically died when she was in her early 40s. My mum was dealing with a lot of different things. So I think probably having us start a squeaking violin at home was not her priority. But when I was four and my sister was eight and we

• 22:13Speaker 02

  were both old enough to start, she had us begin together. And I'm left-handed, so I hated the first lesson was trying to play this way instead of this way. And, and I was also, I was, on the other hand, happy to do anything my sister did.

• 22:33Speaker 01

  So you went together into a room.

• 22:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:35Speaker 01

  You were given two violins, one, a mini, mini violin, yours.

• 22:39Speaker 02

  Probably a 32nd size, yep.

• 22:41Speaker 01

  It's 32nd.

• 22:42Speaker 02

  I think so, yeah.

• 22:43Speaker 01

  32nd of the proper violin.

• 22:44Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  And your sister, a 16th, I don't know, or the next size up would be.

• 22:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, probably a quarter for an eight-year-old, yeah.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  So the pair of you stand there, holding your violins, and they say, what is the first thing you learn?

• 22:55Speaker 02

  Well, our teacher, Brenda Smith, was a Suzuki, is a Suzuki teacher. Suzuki is an incredible teaching method that has focused on the ear more than starting with the technical aspects of playing. And that method allows you to very quickly actually start producing some kind of sound and tunes and melody on the instrument. But of course, you have to physically learn to, to pick it up first.

• 23:26Speaker 01

  I'm just marveling at why your parents, who could now afford it because of your father's entrepreneurial nature, would think of you as a four-year-old, her as an eight-year-old. I know it was her ambition, giving you violin lessons, the pair of you, and Suzuki with a proper teacher. These were people who had ambition for you immediately, did they?

• 23:44Speaker 02

  I, absolutely. I mean, my, my mum was incredibly ambitious for us. And I would say not in a way that put sort of pressure on us being, being good at something. It wasn't that, it was pressure on us to acknowledge and be grateful for the opportunity we had. And that was, I would say, drummed in like a mantra. She did not have the opportunity to learn any extracurricular activities or to take part in that, other than sport that

• 24:23Speaker 02

  happened at school. And here we were with this opportunity. You do not disrespect that opportunity. So I think that happened to be channeled through the violin, but it just goes to show, for those that are not exposed to all sorts of types of options of where to channel a child's talent or interests outside of the core subjects that are taught at school, it does depend on your environment. We happen to have a phenomenally good, enthusiastic, relentless violin teacher that had grown a Suzuki community and workshop base in Ayrshire.

• 25:06Speaker 02

  And my mum had access to that. My sister saw somebody playing because of that. And so we fell into that system and both happened to be really quite good.

• 25:17Speaker 01

  And your first recollection, though, of your first lesson is of being in tears because of this being left-handed and being given a right-handed instrument?

• 25:25Speaker 02

  Yes, I was very traumatised by that at the beginning. I was obviously really determined to, to want to hold it, to hold it the wrong way. But she was such a fantastic teacher. And so much of the work that I do now that is supporting teachers is with a memory of her relentlessness and tenacity. And in, in, it was all, it was, it was strict and quite fiercely kept us moving forward all the time, but always done with this enthusiasm and, and smile.

• 25:57Speaker 01

  Most of the violinists in the world hold the bow in their right hand.

• 26:00Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 26:01Speaker 01

  You hold yours in your?

• 26:04Speaker 02

  No, I, I play the way that everybody plays.

• 26:07Speaker 01

  So you've had to change that. So you are a right, you are a left-handed person. Is that the way it has to be? It is not possible to play the other way around?

• 26:14Speaker 02

  It's very antisocial to be in an orchestra where everyone is doing this. And the bow is pretty long and goes in lots of directions. If I were to have learnt this way, that would have been, that would have posed a lot of, there are some fiddlers and more of the folk traditions of left-handed violinists. You string the instrument the other way. It's possible to do, just like a guitar, but it's not.

• 26:35Speaker 01

  There's lots of research showing how difficult it is for people who are right-handed or left-handed to be made to write with the right hand.

• 26:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 26:42Speaker 01

  They develop stammers and all sorts of other problems. You had no difficulty. After this first traumatic lesson of crying, you just got on with it.

• 26:49Speaker 02

  I did get on with it.

• 26:50Speaker 01

  What hand do you write with now?

• 26:51Speaker 02

  I write with my left hand. No, I'm very much.

• 26:53Speaker 01

  You are a left-handed person.

• 26:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm absolutely left-handed.

• 26:55Speaker 01

  You played the violin with your right in order not to knock the eye out of whoever's in the second row of violins?

• 26:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I, the leading of the left versus right hand, obviously both hands do such difficult things with the violin. The bowing is not really easier or harder than the fingers on the left hand. And it's such an awkward and lopsided instrument anyway to play. So what strengths are sort of compensated for? But when you're, when you're essentially, you've put the opposite skill in the opposite hand.

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• 28:43Speaker 01

  You got to grade eight by the age of eight. So you were clearly accomplished and you were clearly practising a lot.

• 28:49Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  Were these happy years or they were focused years? It's the most unusual young childhood to have, from the age of four to eight, to go from nothing to grade eight.

• 29:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, I would.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  How did you achieve that?

• 29:02Speaker 02

  I definitely practised. I practised every day, often hours a day.

• 29:06Speaker 01

  How many hours a day when you were a little girl?

• 29:09Speaker 02

  My mum raised it incrementally. So when we started playing the violin, she would get the violin out every day, but for five, 10 minutes. But it was every day. It was not a, we didn't, I mean, I look at my own daughter now and look at the answering back and she's two, answering back and questioning to me that, that she does. I, I'm not sure that we ever would have got away with that. We were, we did what we were told. And, and then that was increased to, you know, 15, 20 minutes, 25, 30 minutes. I definitely enjoyed the practice part more than my sister did. My sister enjoyed the playing together

• 29:52Speaker 02

  part. So when, you know, there was groups of musicians and I think more of the social aspect, I could get very lost in the world of playing. So I would go into her room and wouldn't really know how much time had gone, gone past. And I, I very clearly remember that feeling. And part of it was the emotion of music and part of it was the excitement of the challenge of trying to get better. So I would be like, I could see the notes in front of me. I'd be trying to improve this really difficult thing. And there was something that was like exhilarating about that.

• 30:30Speaker 01

  So is that the essence of the emotion that you're feeling, exhilaration? What are you feeling?

• 30:36Speaker 02

  No.

• 30:37Speaker 01

  At seven and eight, as a little girl, playing for hours on end in a room alone?

• 30:41Speaker 02

  I think there's two very different emotions. One is the, the, one is from the music and it is the world of, it's like an insight, it's like an insight into something that you don't understand at six, seven, eight, but you feel. And, and so I very clearly remember being.

• 31:10Speaker 02

  Led by the melodies I was playing. And then you'd start to learn double stops where you're playing multiple lines at one time and just the sonority of that and the it's like an energetic vibration, isn't it? That that that comes out of an instrument. I very clearly remember being almost like hypnotized by that. And I remember also thinking my teacher would have told me, you know, you have to be methodical in your practice. You should be practicing this bit and then practicing the difficult bit. And and I would just end up like doing these big sweeps of the piece from beginning to end because I would be so kind of taken by the music. So I would say that was one emotion.

• 31:46Speaker 01

  What was the first love affair with a piece of music? What was the first composer, the one piece?

• 31:50Speaker 02

  Elgar's Salud Amor.

• 31:53Speaker 01

  And how's that begin? How's that go? What's the bit we've written?

• 31:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:00Speaker 02

  It's hard to sing.

• 32:00Speaker 01

  No, but it's even even doing it, the eyes are pricking up with emotion, aren't they?

• 32:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's one of a fairly substantial collection of kind of Elgar miniatures that are very personal.

• 32:16Speaker 01

  So I'm picturing this young girl, pre adolescent girl in her room, playing this and all that's happening, all the exhilaration and the emotion of it all. But you're going to primary school as well. Do you have a best friend? Who's your first best friend outside of Stephanie in the family?

• 32:32Speaker 02

  Amy, Amy Adair.

• 32:34Speaker 01

  And why, why, why were you and she friends?

• 32:36Speaker 02

  Oh, I'm gonna get emotional again. Oh, dear. I haven't spoken to her in a long time.

• 32:49Speaker 02

  Sorry.

• 32:50Speaker 01

  Don't worry. No, it's okay. Takes you back.

• 32:54Speaker 02

  One second, yeah.

• 32:55Speaker 01

  If you can think of a nice story about what you and what you and she got up to.

• 32:59Speaker 02

  She was a right weed bugger to me a lot of the time.

• 33:01Speaker 01

  Ah, well, that we have to keep in. I'm sorry, that's being kept in. She was right, we buggered him a lot of the time, but you had fun together. She was a proper friend.

• 33:08Speaker 02

  Oh, eight. So Amy, Amy, I knew from the age of about four or five and she was my absolute best friend until I I left Scotland when I was 10. But Amy was such and is such a deep thinker. You know, she would, me and her would talk for hours on end. I mean, just analyzing the world and and and she went on to, I mean, she she has just gone from thing to thing, which is trying to do good for other people. And that's how she was from from childhood. I mean, just such an intelligent, aware, fascinating young person.

• 33:51Speaker 02

  So me and her were just, you know, you, you could just, it didn't matter where, we didn't need anything. We would just sit and talk forever.

• 33:59Speaker 01

  How wonderful.

• 34:00Speaker 02

  And it was very, very, it was awful, actually, when I said that I was leaving to go to music school and to go to boarding school in England.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  So your teenage years are spent playing the violin and being at school?

• 34:13Speaker 02

  Well, I got accepted to the Yehudi Menhuin School in in England. I attended that from the age of 10, horrifically homesick, had an incredibly strict teacher, terrifying teacher, actually. She was also a genius teacher when it came to the, the re-molding of the physicality of playing. And if I may just speak about this for two seconds.

• 34:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, please.

• 34:40Speaker 02

  Just because so much of my life's philosophy goes back to her teaching. And it's, it maybe seems like a bit of a stretch, but it's so interconnected. She asked me to stop playing for the couple of months before I attended the school. Because her name was Natasha Boyarsky. She had been brought over from Russia by Yehudi Menhuin when he set up the Yehudi Menhuin School.

• 35:06Speaker 01

  Yehudi Menhuin, for those who don't know, and they wouldn't be listening to us if they didn't know, was a child prodigy himself, a great virtuoso violinist, also a conductor and the founder of this school.

• 35:16Speaker 02

  The founder of this school and also a humanitarian, you know, somebody that that believed in merging worlds together, believed in across cultural exchange, across generational exchange, how he conducted himself throughout his life. You know, I think it's all there in the heart of his sound, but he carried that out till till the end.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  So go back to your teacher.

• 35:42Speaker 02

  She asked that I stop playing the violin for two months before attending school, which I did not do because my mom thought I, she just couldn't deal with the idea of me not doing anything for the for the summer. And the idea was to unlearn what was a fairly tense and tight and controlling way of playing. I was trying to play harder and harder pieces through this sort of gripping. I had all kinds of like funny angles in the way I was playing the violin and I was, I was, it was excellent teaching, but it was not a good technical basis for playing. So the idea was for me to forget physically as much of that as possible and relearn a

• 36:21Speaker 02

  way of playing that allows the body to breathe, reconnects you to a sense of grounding and and and forms very natural and personalized physical positions with violin. And so it was a fairly torturous first six months where I went from playing Tchaikovsky violin concerto to playing open strings again for six months.

• 36:47Speaker 02

  But I believed and trusted this teacher so much.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  But she was both a monster and a genius.

• 36:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:54Speaker 01

  And how did that manifest itself? I mean, similarly in her discipline and her talk, the way she spoke to you? I mean, how did she show? Why were you terrified of her and yet admiring of her?

• 37:06Speaker 02

  She could be the sweetest, most, you know, little things like she would speak of the violin as if it was a, a living, breathing being and would appeal to the, the sweetness in a, in a eight, nine, 10 year old in our, in our approach to how we would deal with like a kitten or a puppy. And she would speak in these incredible, incredibly vivid imaginative terms. Every piece we played, she would sit, sit in her chair, you know, she would, she would rarely stand up. She'd just sit in this chair and it was always her studio room that we would be in.

• 37:50Speaker 02

  She would sit in her chair and she would, she would tell you a story about the piece that you were playing. And it was so vivid and so beautifully crafted that she would bring you into this world of imagination. And similarly, she would use that imaginative power to get you to stop being controlling with the instrument, but to allow the sonority of the violin, the vibrations of the violin to to speak themselves. It's kind of like if you, it's like, it's connected to everything. You're trying in a relationship to force someone to do something that it's, it, okay, maybe to a certain point you can get them to do that thing. But in the end, after time goes by, you are not winning with that person.

• 38:35Speaker 02

  You know, you are not through force going to get the best out of them. And she would, she would somehow get into the mind of an eight, nine, 10 year old that this was how to approach an instrument. You had to allow it to breathe, coax it, coax the sound out of the instrument. The flip side was that if you were doing badly, if you hadn't practiced, if you were not hardworking, if you were not concentrating.

• 39:07Speaker 02

  It was the absolute opposite flip side of an, just a terrifying person that was not gonna, you know, there was no monitoring of you shouldn't speak to a child like that or you, you know, you know, the, the, the fear was absolutely real. I was lucky because I liked practicing. I was very conscientious. I also had a very strict mother, so I was not, I was used to quite a, like a fiery and fearful environment. I don't mean that in a sob story way at all. You know, I, I have no, I have no qualms with that aspect of my upbringing and.

• 39:50Speaker 01

  That kind of teaching wouldn't be really tolerated today. She'd have to modify.

• 39:54Speaker 02

  It'd be, it'd be, it'd be tricky today. It would be tricky.

• 39:57Speaker 01

  So under this tutelage, though, you developed brilliantly. Can you remember the first time you performed in front of an audience and thought, yes, yes, yes, I've, I've got it. I'm delivering. This is exciting.

• 40:08Speaker 02

  I never felt that because I was always too, either in my own world. I mean, I remember when I did the Ayrshire Music Festival, so I was maybe seven or eight and all the people in my category, you had to say what grade you were. And all the people in my category were, you know, in their sort of late teens. And I remember my mom backstage with me, this was in Ayr Town Hall, and she was like, Nicola, you're not focused. And I was running around and I was just in a total, you know, I was just being a child. And then somehow violin would go in hand and I would walk up and be completely immersed in this kind of focus.

• 40:47Speaker 02

  And and I think that's generally how I was until I was maybe about 13 or 14, when you start becoming far more aware of your environment and the whole notion of kind of nerves and what can go wrong. And and also I don't necessarily think the environment that surrounds classical music education and development really encourages either a huge amount of creativity or supports the psychological development that is needed alongside the refining of such a difficult skill.

• 41:25Speaker 02

  If you are obsessively five, six hours a day practicing, trying to perfect unbelievably difficult stuff, you have to take care of the health of the, the mental health and physical health of that person in equal measures. Otherwise, when it gets to the point where you have to play that in front of people and all you're focused on is like a million and one tiny little hurdles that could possibly go wrong, that's what's going to happen. You have to develop a healthy overview. And I, I think that's, that is something that we, we are way behind the, the sporting world in terms of that support.

• 42:02Speaker 01

  When you were 12, 13, the, the physical changes that came with adolescence, did they knock you sideways? Or did you just take them in your stride because you were playing the violin all day?

• 42:10Speaker 02

  I think the violin was such a centering safe haven. And I have a stepdaughter who just turned 18, who's a fantastic singer. I mean, she's just so natural. And I, I tell her all the time, tie yourself to something that really you own and it is not going to be.

• 42:37Speaker 02

  That can't be ruined by anything around you. And I think of all the normal insecurities that you go through between the ages of 12, 13 and 22, you know, and, and if you have that thing, it's like, uh, it's like, uh, it's a bit of armor, you know, that, that you can be protected within that world.

• 43:03Speaker 01

  Were there boys at the school? Did you have any?

• 43:06Speaker 02

  Plenty of boys at the school, lots, a fair amount of handsome boys at the school.

• 43:10Speaker 01

  Oh, good. That's nice. That was encouraging. Did you have a crush? Was that, can you remember your first handholding or kiss?

• 43:16Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. The first boy I really fancied was called Leonard and he then became my boyfriend when I was 19 and we were together for nearly 10 years.

• 43:27Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh.

• 43:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. And he's still one of my greatest friends.

• 43:29Speaker 01

  So a proper relationship?

• 43:31Speaker 02

  Oh, proper, very proper.

• 43:32Speaker 01

  Well done him. What instrument did he play?

• 43:34Speaker 02

  He's a, he's a fantastic cellist, now a conductor. Well, he, he both plays and, and conducts.

• 43:41Speaker 01

  And could you imagine having as a boyfriend, somebody who wasn't a musician? I mean, you obviously met at school, you bonded, he played the cello.

• 43:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, as, as a like, serious boyfriend probably would be, I don't know, I find a lot of people fascinating and interesting and, and inspiring. And actually, when I really started learning about the world and being hugely curious about the world in my very early teens, a lot of the people that inspired me most were not musicians at all. Yehudi Menewin was a, was a, a kind of outlier. And I think sometimes I don't.

• 44:19Speaker 01

  What's that mean, an outlier in this context?

• 44:21Speaker 02

  It mean, what I mean is that a lot of the people I was deeply moved by would be individuals of a story of sort of hope in the face of adversity. It wasn't like my heroes in life were all the best virtuosos violinists or the greatest conductors. I loved music deeply. I loved classical music deeply. I loved the violin deeply, but I was always and still am, and I think you would, if, like, if you're looking at the things that I'm doing now, it kind of shows up in every choice that I make. I'm sort of about

• 44:59Speaker 02

  music and what it reveals is for me more about the insight into the human experience.

• 45:08Speaker 01

  And though I only had a few interactions with Yehudi Menhuin, I did know him. And this is what he was all about as a person.

• 45:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:15Speaker 01

  And you had the, the honour and privilege of playing the violin at his funeral.

• 45:21Speaker 02

  I did, yes. So I met Yehudi Menhuin a number of times during my first year at school and had the honour of playing the Bach double with a great friend of mine, Alina Ibragimova. And I was due to play Bach A minor concerto with Yehudi Menhuin. I was due to start having lessons with him. And that date fell about three weeks after he passed away. And instead, we played a tribute concert to him, because the concert was going to be in Birmingham Symphony Hall. And so we played a tribute concert to him in, in

• 46:01Speaker 02

  Birmingham instead with Jean-Pascal Tortelier conducting. And the funeral of Yehudi Menhuin, both at the school and then in Westminster Abbey, both Alina and I played the second movement of that, that Bach double concerto.

• 46:18Speaker 01

  And on days like that, did you have nerves?

• 46:21Speaker 02

  Oh, yes. Yeah.

• 46:22Speaker 01

  And how does one cope with nerves when you're young? And I mean, what, what do you do about the nerves? Westminster Abbey, Yehudi Menhuin?

• 46:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, and William and Harry and Charles were all standing right in front of us. And as, you know, I was, I was 12 and they were really handsome young boys. And I know I shouldn't have been thinking about that, that, you know, in that, in that poignant moment. But, you know, there was lots about, and, and the, the Abbey was filled with, I mean, who's who have, yeah. So, but I, look, when you are practising something hours and hours a day, the nerves are natural, but they, they don't, if you're serious about that thing, they don't really make a big dent on what it is you are prepared to do.

• 47:18Speaker 02

  You know, like that amount of investment in a, in a thing is going, the, the fruits of it are going to show up whether you're nervous or not.

• 47:28Speaker 01

  This is interesting. I've had conversations about this with great actors and with great athletes. And they say basically, if you've done the training, if you've done the rehearsing, fundamentally, you know, it's going to be okay. So the other thing is quite, in a way, superficial.

• 47:40Speaker 02

  In a way, yes.

• 47:41Speaker 01

  You've got to get up, get in there and get on with it.

• 47:43Speaker 02

  Exactly. And what's strange is that in the worst moments of anxiety pre-performance, you think that you believe in that state of vulnerability, that, that the margins are huge, that you could play really badly or play really well. The reality is very rarely that, you know, they feel big to you, but basically what, what you can do, you're likely to do.

• 48:10Speaker 01

  This is good advice coming from the International Festival to us mere mortals on the fringe. We are pleased to be reminded of that. We may think it's a disaster, but in fact, it's only marginally different from what we did yesterday. That's quite a consolation. Now, we, the public, got to know you through, I suppose, you winning Young Musician of the Year. That's when you became sort of a household name for people who love music. Big thing for you or you just took it in your stride?

• 48:32Speaker 02

  No, it was a huge thing. I didn't sleep for about three days before that final and very nervous, but not during the performance. During the performance itself, I was calm.

• 48:54Speaker 01

  Were you conscious of your appearance? What did you wear? How was your hair? Did that matter to you? Do you think about that as a performer?

• 49:02Speaker 02

  Oh, it's so funny because I was in such a bubble. Me and my mum went into Harvey Nichols in Edinburgh.

• 49:13Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 49:14Speaker 02

  And it was like an occasion. So we were like, let's buy a really nice dress.

• 49:21Speaker 02

  My mum literally said, this dress shimmers like Shimonovsky. It was like some like momentary thing. And it was a strapless dress that had a, it was an Amanda Wakeley dress. I went on to then like pretty much wear Amanda Wakeley dresses for a good 10 years after that. And I just tried it on, it fit, it was comfortable. There was nothing obstructing the violin. I curled my hair like I would do for any, I didn't think anything of it. And went out and I was, you know, playing. I was wearing heels. I was 16. And it wasn't till a while

• 50:02Speaker 02

  later, all of these things started to filter back to me by the odd person that dared tell me the actual truth of how much shit talking there was about my choice of dress and that I was like, I dressed so over the top and I was trying to, trying to be older than my years. And I was like, I, my mum is an unbelievably fashionable person. Like, my mum will be the best dressed person in any room at any time. And my mum's in her mid 70s now and still walks in and she's like the person that like people comment on how she's, what she looks like and how she's dressed. So that was kind of my influence, I guess, in

• 50:47Speaker 02

  terms of choice of clothes and, and grew up very taken in with her love of fashion.

• 50:57Speaker 02

  So I was oblivious, completely oblivious. I just thought, oh, this looks good. So, you know, and, and there was quite a lot of that that continued in, in the, the next couple of years.

• 51:07Speaker 01

  How did you cope over those years with the publicity that came with being this prodigy and suddenly playing everywhere and all of that?

• 51:16Speaker 02

  I think there was, yeah, it was a few worlds running in parallel, I would say. So there was, yeah, I remember doing the first kind of big press day after winning the competition. I remember very clearly that the picture of me was, was almost the whole front page of the Times the day after the competition. And that, that was, it wasn't a given for any winner of, of BBC Young Musician. But then it was a whole, I think also because I was Scottish, Scotland really rallied behind a Scottish person winning. The final

• 51:56Speaker 02

  was in Edinburgh that year. So it was in Asher Hall, a complete full circle. And I, I think there was, there was, there was a lot of.

• 52:08Speaker 02

  Flurry, you know, this is like, I was a certain person at a certain time in a certain place, doing a certain thing. There's a lot of energy around it. But, oh my goodness, so many awful moments. I like

• 52:20Speaker 01

  Give me an example.

• 52:21Speaker 02

  Concerts I didn't play well. I remember being on tour, playing Sibelius Faling Concerto. That was probably a couple of years later. Now, this was a tour that I should never have done in this way. I was playing Sibelius for the first time, Bruch. So for anyone that doesn't know Sibelius, it's like a forty minute, incredibly profound, difficult, taxing concerto. Sibelius for the first time, Mendelssohn Concerto and Bruch Concerto. These two are like, hard and incredibly, they're the real warhorses of, so everyone knows them. They've been performed phenomenally well, millions of times. Those three on one tour with one

• 53:00Speaker 02

  day off, and it was like twelve gigs. Just insane. But, you know, I look back on that and I think, God, that was such an impossibly difficult. I would never do that now with all the experience I have and the improvements in my playing over time. I would never do that now. After the first concert, the probably very well meaning assistant at IMG Artists thought it would be a good idea to send me the reviews of the first concert of the tour, which were, I mean, I can't remember the exact words, but it was basically, it was not good about me at all. Rightly so. I wasn't playing well.

• 53:38Speaker 01

  You should never read your reviews.

• 53:39Speaker 02

  Well, I just opened an email. Would it have been an email? Would it have been an email? I just opened the email. And, and, and then I had to get on stage another twelve times, knowing that the whole touring party, the, you know, and I was doing something I should never have been doing. You know, that's a kind of, I would say, a microcosm of lots of things that were happening. And I remember when I was about twenty two, maybe, calling my, my first manager ended up leaving. So I had a different manager, ended up calling her and saying, I need to get off this conveyor belt and re-center myself with my playing and my music.

• 54:18Speaker 01

  Like taking two months off and repositioning your whole life.

• 54:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it was like, but we've got these tours planned. The pressure on me to not do that, even though everyone could see I was headed for a potential car crash, you know, and it was like, let's just get the money in whilst we can.

• 54:40Speaker 01

  And did you manage to climb off the

• 54:42Speaker 02

  Oh, I did. Yeah.

• 54:43Speaker 01

  The Worlda gig?

• 54:44Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 54:44Speaker 01

  Well done.

• 54:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 54:45Speaker 01

  Tell me about your, your husband, who he is, how you met him, and what happened there?

• 54:54Speaker 02

  So my husband is Winton Marsalis. He's obviously a very, very good trumpeter, very well known jazz musician.

• 55:03Speaker 01

  When did you first set eyes on him, physically see him in person?

• 55:07Speaker 02

  See him in person. I was seventeen. And it was in their fairly newly built home of jazz in the centre of Manhattan.

• 55:17Speaker 01

  And you were out there performing yourself, were you?

• 55:19Speaker 02

  I was there because I was invited as a student delegate to a weekend of activities called the Academy of Achievements Summit.

• 55:30Speaker 01

  But you didn't lock eyes on that occasion?

• 55:32Speaker 02

  Oh, I know. I met him and I was playing with Itzak Perlman sitting right in front of me. Ellie Wiesel was speaking. Winton Kathleen Battle was singing. Our first address to all the students for those couple of days was, was Bill Clinton, Denzel Washington, like on and on. It was just the most ridiculous weekend ever.

• 55:59Speaker 01

  Some of the most charismatic people in their field, in the world, in the room.

• 56:02Speaker 02

  Absolutely, yes. But the student musicians on one of the various different events over the weekend, we had to, to, to perform a short piece. So I was backstage, this was in the kind of middle sized hall called, I think it was then called the Allen Room. So it was Winton and his quintet Kathleen Battle, me and the pianist that I was there to play with in this tiny little space before having to go out and perform right in front of Itzak Perlman. The whole thing was absolutely crazy. But we had a brief exchange and conversation. And then over the years, I, whenever I could, I would see the band play, got to know some

• 56:44Speaker 02

  of the, the band members. And, and then I remember the first real time I got to know Winton better was when I asked if I could play some music to him when I was doing my debut recital in New York. And so me and the pianist I was touring with at that time, we went to his apartment, performed Ravel's Sonata, which has a blues movement, the second movement. For him, he worked with us for like, three hours on this piece. It was just the most unbelievably inspiring.

• 57:18Speaker 01

  How old were you when you went to New York?

• 57:20Speaker 02

  I was maybe by then, maybe eighteen or nineteen. And then, you know, look, I think Winton could see that I was not only trying to improve as a violinist and a musician. I would send him tapes of my performances. I would ask his advice on musical things. But I started very young touring schools, trying to take the violin into educational environments. I started doing that when I was sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. And so he and I had that natural connection.

• 57:59Speaker 01

  So you sort of gradually fell in love through the work. I mean, what I'm trying to get is, is how did it turn from, because you, you know, nineteen, twenty, he's in his mid forties then. So he's a different generation.

• 58:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:11Speaker 01

  When does it turn from being the great trumpeter, also a composer, creating things together, you sending him tapes, him saying, let's work together, into what has blossomed into this, we hope happy marriage, you've got a child, et cetera.

• 58:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:25Speaker 01

  He's one of the star attractions at the festival. So what was the transition? And really what I'm getting towards, I want a moment, I want a moment in your head, if you've got it, because this is about memories, first memories, when you thought something strange was going on here.

• 58:40Speaker 02

  Oh, the, the moment for me was the first moment I met him. There was never a diversion, you know.

• 58:48Speaker 01

  Well, there was a diversion. There was the other nice boy that we mentioned a moment ago from

• 58:51Speaker 02

  No, what I mean is, what I mean, what I, yes, no, no, no. What I mean is that, that my, my connection to and sort of kindred spirit for, for Winton was from the second I met him. Maybe it was also from him to me, but I was seventeen. So naturally, our worlds, worlds did not collide in that way then. But of course, we then, about twelve years ago, we started working on the violin concerto that I effectively begged him to

• 59:29Speaker 02

  write. So we then, you know, asked if he would write a piece of music for violin, which was originally going to be just for solo violin, much smaller undertaking than writing for violin and a full symphony orchestra. I then stepped in for Janine Janssen, when she cancelled playing with New York Philharmonic and Vladimir Yurovsky, I believe that was twenty twelve. And Winton was in town, came to the concert, and he was like, you are really quite a good violinist, better than I, better than I even thought, you know, and I, because I'd been sending him tapes of concerts of mine that I wasn't always happy with to get his view, you know. And he loved that performance so much. He said,

• 1:00:11Speaker 02

  he pivoted at that point and said, okay, I'm not going to write a solo violin piece. I'm going to write a full concerto. And that was a massive moment. And at that point, my then, between American and European managers, they then brought together a whole collection of, I think it was seven different orchestras around the world, that were going to be the touring parties of this premier violin concerto.

• 1:00:33Speaker 01

  How long have you been married now?

• 1:00:35Speaker 02

  We got married in twenty one, so five years.

• 1:00:37Speaker 01

  And what's it like? Because he is, he is a quarter of a century older than you.

• 1:00:41Speaker 02

  He is, he's much older than you.

• 1:00:42Speaker 01

  What is the, is there a challenge to that?

• 1:00:46Speaker 02

  Not.

• 1:00:47Speaker 01

  Not yet.

• 1:00:48Speaker 02

  Look, we have grown up in such drastically different parts of the world and effectively in different generations. However, my interests and.

• 1:01:04Speaker 01

  Oh, I can see that. I mean, you're totally like that.

• 1:01:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, not, not, but not just musical, though. It's like our sort of, our view of the world is scarily aligned and similar. And, and some of that may have been his influence on me through such formative years, but, but, and sometimes I have a bit of a self reckoning with that, like how much of my worldview has been formed by knowing him. But then I like find notes that I had written to myself when I was 14, way before I met him. And I've not changed all that much, but you know.

• 1:01:43Speaker 01

  What did your parents make of it?

• 1:01:45Speaker 02

  My parents, by the time I said, this is the person I want to be with, my parents had been used to me making very bold and outlandish and highly risky choices, like leaving school when I was 15. You know, they weren't in support of that at all. But I was convincing enough, you know, that it was the right thing to do and why I wanted to do it. So I think by that point, my parents were sort of a little resigned to, okay, she's going to carve her own path. And it's not necessarily going to be what we approve of. But then, of course, they got to know Winton. I think it was tough for my dad, obviously, as such a much older person. And I think there were, there were big discussions that they probably had. But I would say that was one of very few things that there was only

• 1:02:29Speaker 02

  an element of their worries that they really brought to me. And I think, I remember somebody saying to me, like, you know, well, is this relationship going to continue? Almost like surely it, it, this is not a long term thing. And I remember saying, I would never have stepped into it if I wasn't utterly convinced that this was my life. This was going to be the person I would marry. Because the risks and the, the, not risks, but the extremities of it were so overwhelming, you know, living in different continents, such a big age gap,

• 1:03:09Speaker 02

  the, the, the, the cultural and also racial aspect of our marriage. All of these things play a huge factor in tensions of what is difficult anyway for two touring musicians.

• 1:03:24Speaker 01

  At a personal level, what does he give you most? At the most intimate level, what is there special about this special man?

• 1:03:33Speaker 02

  I don't know how to do justice really to the, the degree of respect, not as a musician and executing what he has done in the face of such challenge through his life. That is, that's, that should be fairly obvious. But on a personal, behind closed doors, he's not an easy person, like not at all. And I've definitely, I've copied my mum in that way. My dad was not an easy person. Winton is not an, an easy person. But he is the, the goodness and, and profundity in him that I have the, I have the, the, the chance to have an insight into every minute of every day.

• 1:04:18Speaker 01

  Good as a dad, is he changing the diapers and?

• 1:04:21Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, he does all, when he's, when he's there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, but, but that's what he will give to Elise. I mean, Elise is his fifth child.

• 1:04:35Speaker 02

  What he will give to her and has, has given to his other children is, is, is a, a sort of world insight that is not, it's not easy to come by. So I, I, I have to work out how I just ensure that, that that is, that, that I provide an environment that, that can allow Elise to access and, and focus on that relationship to her dad and to not expect or need him to be absolutely everything else. You know, that, that I accept that that's not who I married is, is, is, I mean, my, my sister and her husband and the kind of relationship

• 1:05:18Speaker 02

  they have and how he is in their home. You know, I, I'm never going to have that. But what I, what I do have, you know, is, is, is a huge blessing.

• 1:05:33Speaker 01

  I trust that Elise is going to be brought up to be an engineer, or a doctor, or perhaps even an accountant or a lawyer. Or is she already playing the trumpet? What is she doing?

• 1:05:45Speaker 02

  She's got a little violin. Yeah, she does. And she actually, she's, she just turned two a couple of months ago.

• 1:05:51Speaker 01

  She's got a proper violin?

• 1:05:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, she's got a proper violin. She's got a 32th violin. And she, she likes to pick it up and, and play, play her violin like mommy.

• 1:06:03Speaker 01

  Okay, three quick questions, and then I'll release you to go back to your day job now. Because you're no longer practicing six hours a day, are you?

• 1:06:10Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:06:11Speaker 01

  And does it reach a stage where you practise so much, there is an ease to it?

• 1:06:15Speaker 02

  I think so. I, different people have very different views on this. Some people feel that, you know, if you're a musician, it is your calling to address your instrument for at least an hour or two every single day. That's not my relationship to the violin, because I think that sense of connection to people and to the world around me, I get from so many different types of experiences and forces. So it's, but I'm not like a lot of my colleagues in that way. And I've had to really get comfortable with being very, not seeing them, them as like the status quo that I have to kind of live up to.

• 1:06:51Speaker 01

  Can I say, Nicola, you do it your way?

• 1:06:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:06:54Speaker 01

  And you're doing it brilliantly. I mean, look at you, such an achiever and so young, already a commander of the Order of the British Empire at 39. You'll soon be a dame. It's, you know, written in the stars. Most of your predecessors, as the international festival directors here became knights. So you're, you're, you're there. You're there. Three quick questions before I release you. One is, I want a moment, whatever springs to mind, just say what comes into your head, from your earlier years, a moment of joy, joy.

• 1:07:24Speaker 02

  Going to my gran's house, which is the, the Clues in the Okinawa State, where we just were for my Uncle Tommy's funeral, and going for five, six hour walks led by Uncle Tommy, Uncle Tam. And there would always be about five or six people, kids of all, whomever, and at least seven or eight dogs and often a goat. And we would go off into the estate and nearly fall off cliffs constantly. And then come home and have tatties, beans and mince cooked by my gran.

• 1:08:06Speaker 01

  It's perfect. And a moment of sadness that comes immediately into your head.

• 1:08:10Speaker 02

  A memory that I remember so clearly making me sad was when my mum burnt a stew. She was so meticulous at getting things right all the time. Like, we just never saw my mum do anything not great, you know. And she burnt the stew. And I remember just being, I think I had to like leave the kitchen because I was, I was, I didn't want to show her or my sister that was upset about the fact that, like, I was actually crying, I think, about the fact that my mum burnt the stew and that she felt bad. Because she, it's almost like she didn't know how to deal with the emotion of having done something wrong. And the fact that she was apologising, I couldn't, I couldn't deal with it.

• 1:08:49Speaker 01

  That's a rosebud first. The saddest moment, a burnt stew, but from your mum.

• 1:08:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, I couldn't, I couldn't.

• 1:08:55Speaker 01

  So finally, I feel I've learned a lot, sitting here talking to you about life, about love, about the reality of music making. I do remember, which I think maybe you don't remember, but I do remember being on a hill with you somewhere, and you playing Lark Ascending. And that was very emotionally stirring. When did you start doing, about 10 years ago, was that?

• 1:09:15Speaker 02

  Yes, yeah.

• 1:09:17Speaker 01

  I loved it. Just you, it's a wonderful piece. But what, I've learnt a lot. What, Nicola, Nikki, has life taught you?

• 1:09:27Speaker 02

  To increase like an openness and a curiosity and a patience for something that is not your worldview. I think is the only, is the only thing that I, I force myself every day to try to get back to that place. Like, you think you're sure of this, because I've got my mum and dad's spirit, you know, this is right. But can you, within the things that you believe are full of integrity and are correct, can you, within that, that feeling,

• 1:10:08Speaker 02

  hold as much space as possible for all the possible questions and all the other perspectives and all the world views and lived experiences that, that people have that are equally real to them and equally valid?

• 1:10:21Speaker 01

  Be open to every possibility.

• 1:10:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:24Speaker 01

  Lovely. Nicola Benedetti, thank you so much.

• 1:10:26Speaker 02

  Thank you so much. Thank you.

• 1:10:33Speaker 01

  My thanks there to Nicola Benedetti for, I thought, a completely fascinating conversation. My thanks too to the W Hotel here in Edinburgh for providing us with our studio. The festival, the international festival, goes on as long as the Fringe does. Nicola Benedetti has got this incredible programme running to the end of this month. And I'm here too, with Harriet Jane, my producer, till the end of the month as well, with our Fringe show. Oh, before we go, Harriet, my producer, has found an email. We get so many emails and we love getting them. And we do try to reply to as many as we possibly can. This is Dear Giles and Harriet, this is an email, oh, from David Mortimer. And it's about childhood sadness.

• 1:11:17Speaker 01

  David writes, when I was nine years old, my best friend was a boy called Peter Goodchild. We were in the same class at school and he lived in the next road to me. There was a path between them that we used to walk to each other's houses. During the summer term, to my shock, he told me that his family were moving to New Zealand during the holidays. I think it must have been in denial. But on the day before they left, in August 1962, I was invited to tea at his house with his parents and five siblings. At the end, we said our goodbyes and I walked home along the path. After a couple of minutes, I started crying and was still in tears when I arrived home. I didn't know the word bereavement then, but that is what it was.

• 1:12:02Speaker 01

  He departed and we lost contact, but I often wondered what had become of him. Your podcast prompted me to take action and I managed to trace a likely candidate through an online search using just Peter Goodchild, New Zealand. A short biography came up together with an email address. I reflected on this discovery. Do I take the next step and try to contact him? I talked about it with my wife and a good friend and decided, if not now, when? I sent the email and a few hours later, I received a reply. It was him. He remembered me and even sent images of a class photo featuring us both and a card

• 1:12:45Speaker 01

  that I'd written in, in a very neat nine-year-old handwriting, wishing them bon voyage. It turned out that he now lived in Kent and we had the opportunity to meet up for lunch at his house with our wives last week. We both married in 1975 and have 17 grandchildren between us. It was a great reunion. We had so many memories and so much to catch up on. He said, it was like a dream after 64 years. This was sadly an unexpected bonus of listening to Rosebud. Thank you. David Mortimer. Well, I think Harriet and I believe that this is exactly why we do Rosebud.

• 1:13:29Speaker 01

  Thanks for being with us for this very special episode. Thank you, David Mortimer, and everybody else who writes to us at [email protected]. And a particular thank you to Nicola Benedetti. It's been a special one. I hope you agree. All the best from Edinburgh. This is Giles and my producer Harriet Jane saying, thanks for being with us. And cue that music.

• 1:14:38Speaker 01

  Rosebud is a Plain Jane production, produced by Harriet Jane, hosted by me Giles Brandreth, with music by Phil Leopard, and recorded this week at the JW Marriott Grosvenor House in London's Park Lane. Room service.

• 1:14:55Speaker 04

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