Artist, activist and recipient of the 2017 Queen’s Medal for Music, the glamorous Scottish violinist Nicola Benedetti is one of the leading lights in the next generation of classical musicians.
In a dazzling appearance last year for Cal Performances, she joined the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment at Oakland’s Paramount Theatre in an all-Beethoven program. This weekend, Cal Performances brings her to Berkeley as part of its Berkeley RADICAL initiative, titled “Women’s Work.” The program features the West Coast premiere of “Fiddle Dance Suite,” a new solo violin piece by Wynton Marsalis; Benedetti will also traverse Bach’s solo Chaconne from the composer’s Partita No. 2.
With pianist Alexei Grynyuk as her accompanist, she’ll complete the program with a pair of sonatas: Prokofiev’s delightful Sonata No. 2 in D Major (a work that was originally scored for flute and piano), and Richard Strauss’ richly lyrical Sonata in E-flat Major.
Details: 3 p.m. Jan. 27, Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley; $28-$86; 510-642-9988; calperformances.org.
