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Interview with Violinist Rachel Barton Pine


considered a child prodigy at the violin
she started playing at only three and a
half hi I’m Rebecca Brayton and welcome
to watchmojo.com and today we’re
speaking with American violinist Rachel
Barton pine who has appeared as a
soloist with some of the world’s most
prestigious orchestras
tell us about your history with the
violin how and when and why did you
choose this instrument well when I was
three years old I saw some middle
school-aged girls play violin in my
church and they hit on the most
beautiful long dresses so I asked my
parents for a violin but I was really
intrigued by the sound so I just started
very innocently and fell in love with it
right away all I wanted to do was
practice all day you play rock and you
play classical music both actually it
wasn’t until I was about 21 years old
that I ever tried to play any rock music
on the violin I’ve been playing this
instrument for all my life and listening
to rock music but it never occurred to
me to actually play anything other than
classical on the violin and what
happened is I was invited to play the
national anthem at a Chicago Bulls
playoff game in 95 that was of course
during the Michael Jordan era random
strangers started coming up to me on the
street and saying hey I saw you on the
Bulls game and I never realized that
violins were so cool
so that really inspired me that you know
it’s not that some people like classical
and some people don’t and that’s the end
of the story but that a lot of people
probably just haven’t been exposed to
the potential of what the violin can
really do
so that’s when I started going on rock
radio stations and I would play a little
bit of Metallica Led Zeppelin and then
follow that up with some Paganini or
some errands you know some of their
really you know who likes ready kinds of
things from from classical music and say
hey you know why don’t you guys check
out the concert and it’s it’s really
been successful now do you want to tell
us a little bit about your violin this
is a violin by quinary del gesu quinary
and Stradivari are generally considered
to be the two greatest violin makers
ever
many of the old Italian instruments are
known as the X somebody or another
usually it’s somebody who’s no longer
alive it might be somebody who played
the instrument or perhaps somebody who
owned the instrument this violin is
named the X Sol dot after Marisol dot
who was one of the rare 19th century
women violin soloist there weren’t that
many women soloing around in that
century but but she did it she was
discovered as a teenager by Brahms and
he was her mentor through the rest of
his life they played humour music
together very frequently and Brahms
himself picked to this one so it sounds
fabulous in any repertoire but it sounds
particularly perfect in the music of
Brahms it’s amazing to think that
actually if Murray soul dot was playing
this violin and doing chamber music with
bronze that means that my violin got to
jam with brows
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