Basingstoke: Nicola Benedetti plays Brahms by Muhly, Brahms, Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff, No (2023/2023), Diriģents Cristian Măcelaru, The Anvil, Basingstoke, United Kingdom

Nicola Benedetti, one of the Philharmonia Orchestra’s Featured Artists this season, performs a pinnacle of the violin repertoire. The first movement of Brahms’s Violin Concerto brims with such spontaneity and freshness that it almost seems the soloist is creating it on the spot. The second opens with a gorgeously serene theme, introduced by the oboe and then taken up by the violin. And the third has a fiery Hungarian flavour, demanding the perfect balance of precision and freedom, energy and expressiveness. It’s the perfect showcase for Nicola Benedetti, acclaimed for her ‘grace, inner warmth [and] dazzling dexterity’ (The Scotsman). Rachmaninov wrote his Third Symphony in his villa on the shores of Lake Lucerne, during breaks in his busy schedule as a concert pianist. Far from giving it a holiday mood, though, he infused it with longing for his lost Russian homeland. To open this concert, Romanian conductor Christian Măcelaru has chosen Nico Muhly’s One Line, Two Shapes. Composed in 2021, it speaks of the isolation we experienced during the Covid-19 lockdowns in music that is profoundly moving.