Concert Review
Violin soloist touching, thrilling

By Travis Rivers
Correspondent
The Spokesman-Review
May 9, 2005

Violinist Rachel Barton Pine gave her Met audience a special and rare gift Sunday: an afternoon of music that astonished the ear and touched the heart. In a couple of hours, Barton Pine showed that she had complete command of solo styles from Bach to country fiddling and the responsiveness of a fine chamber music player as well.

Barton Pine began Sunday's concert with a deft array of works for unaccompanied violin. From the moment she began playing J.S. Bach's Sonata in G minor, the audience was hers (and Bach's). Seldom have I observed an audience so quiet.
The eloquence of her playing of the improvisatory opening Adagio was sustained through the remaining three movements with perfectly secure intonation, steady but flexible rhythm and a variety of articulation.

She followed Bach with a three-minute work Barton Pine described as "something completely different." The violinist's fellow Chicagoan, Augusta Read Thomas, wrote "Rush" for the 29-year-old violinist just last year. It alternates an abrupt, ear-catching rhythmic figure with a wide striding melody.

The same intensity and communicativeness that made her Bach such a powerful experience applied to the works heard later in the solo section of Sunday's concert. Two Caprices by fiddler Mark O'Connor showed the composer's roots in Appalachian folk song and country fiddling together with the love of fiddle fireworks that makes these Caprices true descendants of Paganini's.

The wit and virtuosity of Fritz Kreisler's Recitative and Scherzo probably came as a surprise to those used to that composer's big dollops of Viennese whipped cream in his pieces with piano accompaniment.

There was ever a headier serving of technical display in Barton Pine's own variations on the New Zealand National Anthem "God Defend New Zealand."

The violinist ended her solo program with a hoe-down in which she was joined by five-time National Fiddle Champion Tom Ludiker. They played this gallivanting music just like the old friends they are.

In addition to Barton Pine's exemplary playing, she gave short spoken introductions to each work that combined the right amounts of anecdote, information and humor.
After intermission, Barton Pine became the first violinist of the Spokane String Quartet in Antonin Dvorak's Quintet in E-flat major. (The quartet's usual leader, Kelly Farris, assumed the role of second violist.) Here the virtuoso player of the concert's solo section became the ideal chamber music partner.

There was a special pleasure in hearing Barton Pine in excellent duets with second violinist Tana Bachman in the Quintet's Scherzo movement and first violist Jeannette Wee-Yang in the Larghetto.

Sunday's performance was, to my ears, at least, one of this season's most memorable.

It was extraordinary to encounter a solo artist who combined such splendid technique with such intense expressiveness, and who stimulated that high level of excellence in partnerships from country fiddling to classical chamber music.

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Spokane Chamber Music Association
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