It’s the season of the Proms at last, and I have been to the Royal Albert Hall twice already this week. Last night’s performance featured the great violinist and virtuosa Nicola Benedetti and her Stradivarius, playing the Shostakovich Violin Concerto No. 1 with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. Despite having fallen in love with Nicola Benedetti several years ago, this was to be the first time I would actually see her perform live. I was hugely excited.
I was seated in the Upper Circle with a restricted view, and desperately hoped that I would be able to see her properly. And suddenly there she was, far below me on the stage. As she began to play, I looked down at the Arena where the front row of the audience were a mere five metres from the shoes of Nicola Benedetti. I wondered how it must feel to see this finest of musicians so close, and I floated down to the stage in my head to have a look around.
I waited until she had finished playing, and then I called out (not very loudly, because she was not very far away, and it would have been rude to bellow), “I love you, Nicola Benedetti!”
Nicola Benedetti smiled graciously and said in her beautiful Scottish accent, “Thank you. That’s very kind.”
“Come, Nicola Benedetti,” I said to Nicola Benedetti. “Let me take you by the hand and lead you across the Kensington High street of London into Hyde Park. We will sit by Big Golden Albert in the twilight and I will tell you how much I love your playing and your love of music, and the way the tiny hairs on the insides of my ear canals prick up and tingle when you play the highest notes of the high, and whatever was once between my ears goes all warm and fuzzy and jelly-like. Then, if you like, we can discuss whether you privately call your 1717 Stradivarius violin by its first name Gariel, the fact that you were leader of the National Children's Orchestra at the age of eight, and what you think of my suggestion of having a flautist lead an orchestra for a change. But not, of course, if you were leading", I hastily added. "I have also brought my flute Trevor, so we can play together the duet that you played with the first flautist just now near the end of the final movement of the Shostakovich. After that, Nicola Benedetti, I should like to hear the Bruch Violin Concerto No. 1 which you played the very first time I discovered you, if you don’t mind. Thank you very much. Don’t worry, Nicola Benedetti”, I added as an afterthought, wanting to reassure her that I was not seeking to be inappropriate. "I am not interested in taking selfies. I find them lacking in genuine warm human interaction, a gross impediment to one's enjoyment of the occasion, and most importantly, a infallible means of not actually witnessing the very moment one was hoping to experience in the first place in real life, but instead through a tiny glass screen.”
Nicola Benedetti said, “Yes. And then we shall go to the pub.”
But too soon, too soon, the Shostakovich was over, and I was back in the upper circle, far away, and she had left the stage and re-entered [repeat x 4] and played a beautiful encore of the original version of Auld Lang Syne, and then, finally, she was gone.
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| Far, far away |
I waited until she had finished playing, and then I called out (not very loudly, because she was not very far away, and it would have been rude to bellow), “I love you, Nicola Benedetti!”
Nicola Benedetti smiled graciously and said in her beautiful Scottish accent, “Thank you. That’s very kind.”
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| Big Golden Albert, formally known as the Albert Memorial. By MasterOfHisOwnDomain |
Nicola Benedetti said, “Yes. And then we shall go to the pub.”
But too soon, too soon, the Shostakovich was over, and I was back in the upper circle, far away, and she had left the stage and re-entered [repeat x 4] and played a beautiful encore of the original version of Auld Lang Syne, and then, finally, she was gone.
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