In Concert looks at new classical music releases and selects one recording that you need to know about. Here's your classical disc of the week for Jan. 25, 2015.
Album: Homecoming: A Scottish Fantasy
Artist: Nicola Benedetti, violin
Repertoire: Works by Frederic Chopin, including his second piano concerto and the second sonata
Label: Decca
You can't avoid the music of your home. Whether you grew up to a soundtrack of church hymns, Mozart symphonies, Frankie Laine, your hippie parents' 13th Floor Elevators records or the Anthrax albums you bought to fit in with the tough kids, chances are that music will circle back into your life at some point.
For violinist Nicola Benedetti, not even a strict classical education — "I was encouraged to avoid mixing styles," she writes — could keep her away from the folk music of her native Scotland. This recording finds Benedetti embracing that folk tradition with fervor and commitment.
Anchored by a deeply felt performance of Bruch's Scottish Fantasy (a remarkably Celtic-flavoured composition for a German dude), the album's real heart lies in Benedetti's readings of three familiar songs by Robert Burns. Burns's plain-spoken staves have a special significance for this violinist, given that they grew up in the same county of Ayrshire.
"As a child, I sang his songs," she writes in the liner notes. "Re-reading his work as an adult, I am struck not just by the brutality and explicitness of his poems, but the tenderness too, particularly in his love for Scotland and for the people of Ayrshire."
Regardless of what music feels like home to you, or whether you can trace your roots back to old Scotia, you'll feel at home when you listen to Homecoming.
Tune in to In Concert to hear music from this lovely, wistful recording: a definitive statement from one of our great living instrumentalists.
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