Violinist Rachel Barton Pine to play with ESO
Rachel Barton Pine will perform Dvorák's Violin Concerto with the Elgin Symphony Orchestra Friday through Sunday, April 1-3, in tribute to Maud Powell (1867-1920), whom Barton Pine calls her "violin hero."
The concerts take place at 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 1, at the Schaumburg Prarie Center for the Arts, 201 Schaumburg Court; 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 2, and 2:30 p.m. Sunday, April 3, at The Hemmens, 45 Symphony Way, Elgin. Tickets are $30-$65 and can be purchased online or by calling (847) 888-4000.
Powell, who grew up in Aurora, is considered America's first great master of the violin. She was working on Dvorák's Violin Concerto for its New York premiere when she met with the composer in November 1892. He warned her that violinist Joseph Joachim, to whom Dvorák had dedicated the piece, had declared it too difficult for a woman.
Undeterred, Powell played it for him and after she was finished, an impressed Dvorák said he would write Joachim to tell him he had found a woman who could play it perfectly.
Powell gave the Violin Concerto its New York debut on Nov. 12, 1893, with the New York Arion Society Orchestra conducted by Frank Van der Stucken, and performed it again, with Dvorák in attendance, on April 7, 1894, with the New York Philharmonic. After the concert, Dvorák visited her backstage to thank her for her beautiful performance.
Also featured at these ESO concerts, conducted by David Danzmayr, are Dvorák's Othello Overture and Symphony No. 9 "From a New World."
This week, the Elgin Symphony Orchestra is presenting programs in tribute to Powell, including a free master class with Rachel Barton Pine at 10 a.m. Saturday, April 2, at the Gail Borden Public Library in Elgin.
Karen Shaffer, co-founder of the Maud Powell Society for Music and Education, maudpowell.org, is a guest speaker at several of the events, which coincide with Women's History Month. For more information about the Maud Powell programs, many of which are free and open to the public, see ElginSymphony.org.
Rachel Barton Pine's classical music biography leads with the cities whose orchestras she's soloed with, including Chicago, Philadelphia, Atlanta, St. Louis, Dallas, Montreal, Vienna, New Zealand and Budapest, among others. She was a child prodigy who made her solo debut at age 7 and has worked with numerous famous conductors, Zubin Mehta, Erich Leinsdorf, Plácido Domingo and Charles Dutoit to name a few.
Hailed as "the most charismatic, the most virtuosic, and the most compelling American violinist of her generation," her instrument is one of the most important in the world, the "ex-Soldat" violin made in 1742 by Guarneri del Gesu.
Yet like any young woman who came of age in the '90s, violinist Rachel Barton Pine is equally inclined to talk about the musical loves of her life far from the sonatas and concertos she practices and which constitute her current professional life.
She may have intensely researched the musical relationship between Johannes Brahms and violinist Joseph Joachim for her Grammy-nominated 2003 Cedille recording "Brahms & Joachim Violin Concertos," but when she says, "They jammed together all the time," we can see her rock sensibility shine through.
She can reel off a list of her favorite rock bands - AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Anthrax, Metallica, Pantera, Van Halen, Slayer and Megadeth - as readily as she can talk about these 19th-century composers. When Rachel isn't on the concert stage, you can probably find her visiting schools across the United States, passing along her enthusiasm for the violin to the next generation.
David Danzmayr has been described as "extremely good, concise, clear, incisive and expressive." He is in his second season as music director of the Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra in Chicago, and has recently been appointed as music director of the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra.
Danzmayr won second prize at the 2013 International Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition in addition to being a prize winner at the International Malko Conducting Competition and the only European conductor to reach the final of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Sir Georg Solti competition. For his extraordinary success, he has been awarded the Bernhard Paumgartner Medal by the Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum.
Karen A. Shaffer wrote the definitive biography "Maud Powell, Pioneer American Violinist" (Iowa State University Press, Ames: 1988) which received international critical acclaim.
As founder and president of The Maud Powell Society for Music and Education, (see maudepowell.org), she has restored the important musical legacy of Maud Powell (1867-1920) through re-issuance of Powell's Victor recordings on the Naxos classical music label, publication of a children's book, exhibits at the Peru (Illinois) Library, the Indianapolis Children's Museum and Boston's Symphony Hall, Maud Powell commemorative concerts, presentations in schools and colleges, and through co-founding the annual Maud Powell Arts Celebration in Peru, Illinois, where Powell was born.
She served as an adviser to the Peru, Illinois, Statue Committee and spoke at the dedication of the Maud Powell statue in July 1995. Shaffer also spoke at the ceremony inducting Maud Powell into the Fox Valley Arts Hall of Fame in April 2002 in Aurora, where Powell grew up. Shaffer rescued the long-lost Nicholas R. Brewer oil portrait of Maud Powell, which the Society donated to the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.