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Rachel Barton Pine is a violinist through and through. As a three year-old, the precocious youngster pestered her bemused parents for lessons following a performance by string students at her family\u2019s church \u2013 and by the time she was five, she was \u2018self-identifying\u2019 not as someone who plays the violin<\/a><\/strong>, but as a violinist. \u2018I had no concept of career,\u2019 she says. \u2018But I knew that was what I was meant to do with my life. That was my calling.\u2019\u00a0<\/p> True to her word, Pine never wavered from this belief. For her, the violin wasn\u2019t just a means of entertainment, but a way to \u2018nurture your soul and uplift your spirit\u2019. By the time she was eight, and practising at her own instigation for many hours a day, her primary school headteacher suggested home schooling to her parents \u2013 a proposal, dutifully taken on by her mother, that allowed Pine to up the ante to eight hours of practice per day and to make her solo debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the age of ten, before becoming the youngest ever gold medal winner of the International Johann Sebastian Bach Competition in 1992. This strong parental support is more remarkable considering neither of Pine\u2019s parents were musicians \u2013 though her mother sang in the church choir \u2013 nor were they wealthy.\u00a0<\/p> Today, Pine\u2019s passion for the violin is undiminished. Since 2021 she has, on the advice of her medical team, performed seated due to injuries sustained in an incident with a suburban Chicago commuter train in 1995 \u2013 but her playing ability is unaffected. We meet in the lobby of her Edinburgh hotel, following her performance the previous evening of Florence Price<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s Second Violin Concerto (we named this as one of the best works by Florence Price<\/a><\/strong>) with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra (RSNO) at Usher Hall. <\/p> Though a relatively short work at under 15 minutes, the concerto\u2019s sophisticated structure and increasingly busy violin part presents no easy task for the soloist \u2013 and Pine\u2019s barnstorming encore of Liszt<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s Mephisto Waltz <\/em>No. 1 in Nathan Milstein\u2019s fiendish arrangement certainly gave last night\u2019s crowd their money\u2019s worth. I\u2019m surprised therefore to learn that Pine visited Sandy Bell\u2019s, an Edinburgh bar famous for its daily folk music sessions, after the concert, where she jammed for several hours with local musicians. And she\u2019s due to travel to Glasgow to repeat the Price performance this evening \u2013 though she\u2019ll be keeping things fresh with a different encore. \u00a0<\/p> I self-identified as a violinist at five. I had no concept of career, but I knew that was my calling<\/p><\/blockquote> Pine recorded the Price concerto recently with the RSNO as a special 25th anniversary addition to her 1997 album Violin Concertos by Black Composers<\/a><\/strong> Through the Centuries <\/em>for Cedille Records. Typical of her curiosity and commitment, what began as an interesting one-off project for a budding recording artist has turned into a multi-year mission, aimed at introducing long-forgotten works by Black composers not only to leading concert halls, but to violin students at the beginning of their educational journey.\u00a0<\/p>Rachel Barton Pine’s early musical years<\/h2>
A run of performances of Florence Price’s Violin Concerto No. 2<\/h2>