★★★★★
After the year she has had you could forgive Nicola Benedetti for sitting back and taking it easy in December: 2023 was her first year as director of the Edinburgh International Festival, and she has increasingly used her public profile to speak up for greater recognition of the role of the arts in society. Rather than putting her feet up, however, in this concert with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra she drew her performing year to a close by not just playing Beethoven’s Violin Concerto but directing it as well.
Her conducting gestures were so discreet as to be almost invisible, consisting only of an assertive nod or a supportive smile during the big orchestral passages, but that speaks mostly of how hard they had
