When I spoke with the Fort Wayne Philharmonic Orchestra Artistic Director Andrew Constantine in September, he told me about violinist Rachel Barton Pine, who performs worldwide but calls Chicago home. 

“Rachel is somebody I’ve been looking forward to working with,” he said. “She’s a tremendous virtuoso and has a number of friends in our orchestra as well. It’s nice to be able to bring colleagues together in this way.”

Pine will be performing with The Phil on Saturday, March 9, at Purdue University Fort Wayne’s Auer Performance Hall, playing Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto, Op. 14 from 1939.

‘Thrill ride’

In a phone interview, Pine said the Barber concerto “is actually among a few major concertos that I have not yet recorded, but I do have a YouTube video that you can find. I’ve performed this countless times over the years. 

“It’s gorgeous. It’s the only concerto by an American composer which has made it firmly into the international repertoire.

“It has that wonderful kind of earlier 20th-century flavor where violin playing used to be very schmaltzy.” 

Pine’s interpretation is quite different than the way that most soloists play it today.

“The first two movements are very lyrical, and the last movement is a wild perpetual motion,” she said. “It’s a wonderful thrill ride, a great way to end the concerto. And it’s really one of those pieces that has everything. It has the lush, soaring melodies that touch your heart, and then it has the really fast playing that makes you really excited to watch such a thing.”

Staying true to music

Pine’s expressive prowess comes from an unusually deep knowledge of the history of the violin. 

Almost alone among world-class soloists, Pine does not exclusively play the modern steel-stringed violin with symphony orchestras, as she will with The Philharmonic. 

On concerts with small ensembles, she performs music from the Baroque era, more than 300 years ago, on a violin in its original form, with strings of gut. She even performs on the viola d’amore, an exotic instrument with 14 strings. 

Probably to the shock of symphony fans, but not to head-bangers in Chicago, she spent six years playing 6-string electric violin in the heavy metal band Earthen Grave. 

“We had a really fun run and a full-length record that I’m very proud of,” she said. You can find their 2013 self-titled album online.

Meanwhile, her viola d’amore music was used in the soundtrack to the 2018 Oscar-winning period drama The Favourite and the Netflix series Bridgerton.

“No matter what music you’re playing, it’s very important to know where and when it was from, because it’s from a certain time period, a certain place on the planet,” she said. “There were different approaches to violin playing in 1930s America. There were lots and lots of expressive slides,” she says, describing the way a violinist would connect the notes by bending the pitches.

“Nowadays, people know that you should play Mozart more cleanly and Brahms with more vibrato,” she added. “But now we tend to be a little more clean, and sometimes people feel almost guilty putting that much schmaltz into Barber. But I think that was actually what was supposed to be done with that music. And you shouldn’t leave it off any more than you should leave off trills and other ornaments from Baroque music. Those are the decorations, those warm, really audible, present slides that become part of the musical expression. And so it’s really a fun indulgence to be able to use that kind of violin playing.”

Prodigy

Pine got her start as a child prodigy and overcame great adversity. 

She took up violin at 3, and her family put her in an intensive after-school music program. 

“When I was in third grade, my principal suggested that I discontinue attending school,” Pine said. 

He recognized that school was interfering with her music. Her mother began home-schooling her, which was practically unheard of in the mid-80s.

Throughout these childhood years, Pine practiced seven to eight hours a day. 

At 11, she got a position in the Civic Orchestra of Chicago. It’s made up of musicians who are either currently pursuing their musical degrees or have graduated. By the age of 14, she was the concertmaster and frequently going to Europe for professional competitions.

Despite her success, Pine called her time in Chicago “a real struggle.” 

“By the time I was 14, luckily I had advanced enough with my violin playing that I was able to do adult freelance work in town, playing for weddings, subbing in some of the local professional orchestras, and doing all of those things to help stabilize the income for the family because my mom was raising two younger sisters,” she said.

“I completed my formal training when I was 17 and got my first faculty position.”

She never attended college; she went straight to being a professor. In her mid-20s, she became a full-time performer, playing concertos with symphony orchestras around the world.

Shedding light on Black composers

Through her career of more than 40 albums, Pine considers her life’s work to be promoting the music of Black composers. 

“In 1997, I released a recording of 18th and 19th century works for violin and orchestra by Afro-European and Afro-Caribbean composers,” she said of Violin Concertos by Black Composers of the 18th & 19th Centuries. “That record led to attention from educators, students, parents requesting more information.” 

You can visit her educational foundation website at musicbyblackcomposers.org. 

“I never have to worry about the concept of boredom in my life, because there’s always more research to be done,” she said. “I love violin repertoire from the most famous to the least famous, and I love research and history, and I love music education and classical music access.

“I’m so excited to be able to bring this history to children of all races and ethnicities to normalize the inclusion of great works by Black composers.”

The concert with The Philharmonic will begin with contemporary Chicago-based Brazilian-American composer Clarice Assad’s Impressions for string orchestra, followed by Pine’s performance of the Barber. 

The second half concludes with Dvořák’s Symphony No. 7 from 1885. 

“This is Dvořák’s most skillful symphony,” Constantine said. “I think a lot of people think it’s his best, and I love conducting it.”