Getting a grade shouldn t be the ultimate aim in music
Why Nicola Benedetti wants us all to stop fretting about our scales and re-embrace the joy of learning an instrument
Making music: Nicola Benedetti in a live workshop pre-Coronavirus
Credit: Alister G Firth
You could be forgiven for assuming that any music teaching spearheaded by Grammy-award winning violinist Nicola Benedetti might replicate the hothouse environment we associate with a child prodigy. After all, she passed her grade eight by the age of 10 and was the youngest ever leader of the National Children’s Orchestra of Great Britain at the age of eight and won BBC Young Musician of the Year at 16. But the 33-year-old is insistent that it doesn’t have to be this way.