From THE TOLEDO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Violin virtuoso Rachel Barton Pine, known for her cross-over performances of classical music and heavy metal covers on violin, will perform the celebrated Brahms Violin Concerto with the Toledo Symphony Orchestra on Nov. 17 & 18 at 8 p.m. at the Toledo Museum of Art Peristyle Theater.
Rachel Barton Pine has been featured on programs including PBS Newshour, The Today Show, NBC Network News’ “Making a Difference,” and CBS Sunday Morning. She began violin studies at age 3 and made her professional debut at age 7. Today, she is renowned as a leading interpreter of the great classical masterworks who performs with major orchestras around the world under the baton of conductors including Charles Dutoit, John Nelson, Zubin Mehta, Erich Leinsdorf, Neeme Järvi, and Marin Alsop.
The Brahms Violin Concerto is one of Pine’s longtime favorites, she considers it one of the most fulfilling works she performs. Pine has been fascinated with the Brahms Concerto since her earliest violin lessons. She began studying the work when she was 14, and it rapidly became a mainstay of her repertoire. It was with the Brahms Concerto that she won several of her international prizes and made many of her debuts in Europe, America, and Israel.
Rachel Barton Pine shares a strong connection with the Brahms Violin Concerto. “I’m always working to find an effective balance between intellectual validity and instinct — good ideas won’t be effective if you don’t feel them inside, but what you feel needs to be backed up by something more meaningful than ‘I like it that way.’ Basically, every performance needs to be a true collaboration between the performer and the composer, even if the composer has long passed away,” says Pine.
Pine’s personal connections to the Brahms Violin Concerto even extend to the very instrument she uses to play it: a 1742 Guarneri violin hand-picked by Brahms himself for Marie Soldat, a talented musician who was one of the biggest champions of the composer’s Violin Concerto, and later became famous for playing it. Soldat received the violin in 1897, and since then it has been intimately connected to Brahms’ Violin Concerto in D Major. “I like to think that Brahms chose this violin in part because its voice represents most closely what he envisioned for his concerto,” says Pine.
“The Brahms Violin Concerto completes our powerhouse program of famous classical works which also includes Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9 and Overture to the Marriage of Figaro. This is a concert that everyone—from casual listeners to aficionados—will enjoy,” said Felecia Kanney, Director of Marketing for the Toledo Symphony.
Tickets for Dvořák’s New World are available at http://www.toledosymphony.com or by calling the Toledo Symphony Box Office at 419-246-8000.
