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Violinist Nicola Benedetti followed in a line of British Isles teenagers hailed as revitalizers of classical music. In advance of making any recordings whatsoever, she was signed to a six-album contract by the Universal label in 2005 and assigned to its prestigious Deutsche Grammophon imprint, with a paycheck reportedly in excess of one million pounds. She has lived up to her prodigal promise with a series of albums on Decca and other labels. These included a 2024 recording of Beethoven's Triple Concerto, Op. 56, with cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason and pianist Benjamin Grosvenor.

Born July 20, 1987, in West Kilbride, Ayrshire, Scotland, Benedetti was the daughter of a prosperous manufacturer of plastic cases for first-aid kits. At four, she tagged along with her eight-years-older sister Stephanie to a violin lesson and then took up the instrument herself (Stephanie has been active as an orchestral musician). Nicola attended the Yehudi Menuhin School. She gave performances at several top British concert halls, later moving to London to study with violinist Maciej Rakowski. When Benedetti was 14, she won a Prodigy of the Year contest on England's Carlton Television network. A hint of her potential crossover appeal came when she drew a crowd of 10,000 at the rock-oriented Glastonbury Festival's "Classical Extravaganza" in the summer of 2003.

Benedetti took a big step toward mainstream classical stardom when she won the BBC's Young Musician of the Year award in 2004, performing Szymanowski's virtuoso concerto and becoming the first Scot to take home the prize. Her debut recording on Deutsche Grammophon came the following year with an album of concertos by Chausson, Szymanowski, and Saint-Saëns with the London Symphony Orchestra. She paused her career to pursue further studies, but soon, her schedule was as full as ever, encompassing a 2010 debut at the BBC Proms, chamber music recitals with her trio (Leonard Elschenbroich, cello; Alexei Grynyuk, piano), chamber and concerto performances in North America and Europe, and visits to British schools to encourage new talent. Released to coincide with a trio of performances at the 2012 BBC Proms, The Silver Violin -- a collection of music made famous in films -- consolidated Benedetti's position as one of the most popular British violinists of her generation.

She moved to the Decca label in 2011 for the album Italia, in which she ventured into Baroque music, but mostly, she has played standard Romantic repertory. Another new facet of her skills was revealed in 2019 when she recorded the Violin Concerto and Fiddle Dance Suite of jazz composer Wynton Marsalis, for which she won a 2020 Grammy Award for Best Classical Instrumental Solo. Benedetti returned in 2020 with a recording of Elgar's Violin Concerto in B minor, Op. 61. After the concerto album Baroque in 2021, she returned in 2024 on Decca with the album Chanson de Nuit. In 2017, Benedetti received the Queen's Medal for Music, becoming the youngest honoree up to that time, and in 2019, she was made Commander of the Order of the British Empire. ~ James Manheim

Geminiani was an important and influential Italian violinist, composer, and theorist. During his life, he was overshadowed by Handel, and Vivaldi, and he is still relatively obscure today in spite of the great originality and beauty of his compositions and his considerable place in music history's march. Geminiani, a student of Corelli, expanded the art of violin playing to a level previously thought unattainable. Many of the techniques he introduced or developed are now part of the standard technique of the violinist. Likewise, his practical treatises on music inspired numerous successors. The most important one, The Art of Playing on the Violin (1751), was the first instruction manual addressed to advanced players from a professional viewpoint, as opposed to a primer for beginners. His The Art of Accompaniment on the Harpsichord is likewise unique for its point of view, being framed from the soloist's perspective rather than the accompanist's. Geminiani published a number of other treatises on harmony, guitar playing, and further aspects of violin playing. As a composer, Geminiani accomplished little in the way of structural innovation. Mostly, he followed Corelli's models in his numerous sonatas and concertos, but his music is generally richer, harmonically somewhat more complex, and substantially more difficult to play than that of his former teacher, with a certain free and creative flair. The underestimation of his influence was not just a result of the Romantic eclipse of all things Baroque, but began even in his own day: Geminiani somehow incurred the critical wrath of the most influential British music writer of the day, Charles Burney.

Geminiani was born in 1687 and began his studies in Milan, but he encountered his most important teachers, Corelli and Alessandro Scarlatti, when he moved to Rome. Before 1714, he held several posts in Italy, including those in Lucca and Naples, but met with little success. In 1714, his career took a sharp turn upward when he moved to London. He quickly met with acclaim as a virtuoso performer and soon earned ongoing support from several influential patrons. Between 1716, when his Op. 1 violin sonatas were published and 1726, when his arrangements of Corelli's sonatas were published as Op. 5, little is known of Geminiani's whereabouts or activities. From 1727 through the middle or late 1740s, Geminiani continued to live in London, making several trips to Ireland and publishing more sonatas and concertos. He was also most active during this time as a soloist and conductor. Although he continued to perform occasionally, his later years were spent primarily in teaching and writing and publishing his various treatises. In 1759, he moved to Dublin, and he returned to England only once more before his death in 1762.