For the record, Scottish violin virtuoso Nicola Benedetti last performed in Santa Barbara as soloist with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in 2018, when she was still a twentysomething sensation on the rise in the classical music world. She returned to town last week at Campbell Hall, in a UCSB Arts & Lectures-sponsored appearance, at the ripe old age of 38, a mother, wife of Wynton Marsalis, and director of the prestigious and adventurous Edinburgh International Festival since 2022.
Her welcome return came in the form of what could be described as recital mode, revisited. Enter celebrated young accordionist Hanzhi Wang (who we heard at the Lobero with mandolinist Avi Avital in 2023), guitarist Plinio Fernandes, and cellist Adrian Daurov. As she told the Campbell Hall audience, after opening with the dulcet, infectious tones of Maria Theresia von Paradis’ Sicilienne, “I wanted to get away from the formality of playing with a piano and work with instruments that could be found around the world, in a café atmosphere.”
She has documented this special project on last year’s inviting album Violin Café, from which much of the Campbell Hall was drawn. She easily rose to the challenge of Paganini’s infamously pyrotechnical Caprices, as well as delving into the luminously lyricism of his Cantabile in D, Opus 17. Mexican composer Manuel Ponce’s Estrella had as a tour de force counterpoint, the delicious and technically demanding maze of Pablo Sarasate’s Navarra, with the double-playful exhilaration of a duo with cameo-making violinist Yume Fujise.