Rachel Barton Pine believes very strongly that whether you’re listening to Megadeth or Mahler, the emotional reaction that music stirs inside you remains essentially the same.
“I want people to know that the cliches aren’t true,” Pine, an internationally acclaimed violinist, said. “Go to the symphony, and it’s not just the country club set. Go to a metal show, and you’re not going to get shoved against the wall. You don’t have to understand every detail about everything being performed. You just need to listen. It speaks directly to human emotion.”
Pine will perform Brahms’ Concerto for Violin with the Bangor Symphony Orchestra at 3 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 20, at the Collins Center for the Arts.
The night before she’ll perform a classical-inspired program of songs by Metallica, Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, among others, at 8 p.m. at the Central Gallery on Central Street in downtown Bangor, with guest musicians from the BSO.
For more than a decade, Pine has been performing her interpretations of metal and hard rock songs in alternative venues, in addition to her globe-trotting career performing with orchestras the world over. Her love for heavy metal began when she was a teenager and would spend literally her entire day practicing her violin. By the end of the day, the last thing she wanted to listen to was classical music, so she cranked up the Metallica and other ’80s thrash metal bands and spent the last few hours of the day headbanging.
“I would listen to rock music and just sort of turn off my brain,” Pine said. “Now that I play this music on my violin as well, I realize that I originally began to love it not because it was so different from classical, but because how close it is. The music is very complex and intense and sophisticated in its composition.”
Pine, 42, has had quite a varied career in music. She debuted with her hometown orchestra, the Chicago Symphony, at age 10. By her early 20s, she had won countless international awards. In 1994, she played the national anthem before one of the championship games for the Chicago Bulls, a performance that brought her new fans outside of the realm of classical music — fans such as current and former members of Slayer, Megadeth and the Scorpions.
“Uli John Roth from the Scorpions is a friend. … He wanted to hear his favorite part of the Brahms concerto, and it’s at the end of the exposition,” Pine said. “There a riff there that he incorporates into his guitar solos. And Eddie Van Halen started doing that riff too. And I realized that that lick is totally a shredding kind of move. It started there.”
With the Brahms violin concerto in particular, which she’ll be playing with the BSO on Sunday, Pine has a deeply intimate connection. Her violin, a Guarnari on permanent loan that rivals Stradivari for its rarity and purity, belonged at one point to violinist Marie Soldat, a musician who was discovered by Brahms himself in the late 19th century. Furthermore, a teacher she studied with in Berlin was a student of a student of Brahms’ close collaborator, Joseph Joachim.
“It’s amazing to have this direct lineage,” Pine said. “I’m just thrilled to be a part of this violin’s journey. I’m grateful to be allowed to have this voice heard by audiences. It’s glorious.”
In addition to the Brahms concerto, the BSO will perform Beethoven’s King Stephan Overture and Schumann’s Symphony No. 4. For tickets, visit bangorsymphony.org, or call the Collins Center for the Arts at 581-1755.
