James Gaffigan conducts Marsalis and Strauss — With Nicola Benedetti

Scottish-Italian volin star Nicola Benedetti makes her mark on the 30th anniversary edition of the Verbier Festival alongside James Gaffigan and the mega-talented Verbier Festival Junior Orchestra! The virtuoso takes the stage first to wow the Alpine crowd with a piece written specially for her by the great Wynton Marsalis: the 2015 Violin Concerto, a feast of divergent influences that cohere into a delightful whole, with nuances of Strauss and Gershwin, jazz and blues, Afro-American music and its Anglo-Celtic roots—a playground for Benedetti to show off her "adventurous spirit and sterling musicianship" (Classic FM). The VFJO and maestro Gaffigan round out the program with Richard Strauss's dazzling tone poem Don Juan, the modernist master's first international success at age 24, a musical evocation of the libertine's adventures and misadventures from fickle, flighty youth to world-weary resignation and death. 

Photo © DR
medici.tv’s broadcasts of the Verbier Festival's 30th anniversary edition are produced with the support of Madame Aline Foriel-Destezet.
Nicola Benedetti appears courtesy of Decca Classics.