Rachel Barton Pine, 2011
(Robert and Talbot Trudeau via Flickr)
In the afternoon of Friday, Nov 21, a little more than a hundred musicians gathered in the cafeteria of Twin Groves Middle School in Buffalo Grove to attend a performance and short lecture by Rachel Barton, sometimes known as Rachel Barton Pine, the world-renowned Chicago-area violinist who made her debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at age 10, the Daily Herald reports.
She played a few pieces and talked about them, including one of Niccolo Paganini’s caprices for solo violin, Op. 1.
Just last year, Ms Barton Pine gave a rare performance of the complete opus, all 24 numbers, in the nation’s capital. Most violinists never put these works in a concert, though they are considered required repertoire for conservatory students. Those students tend to restrict their performances, however, to private rooms or even practice rooms because of the extraordinary difficulty of these works.
Paganini dedicated them to “the artists” that would perform them nearly two centuries ago, and although we know more about violin performance than we did back then, the works still present a challenge for even the best performers. Recordings are almost impossible to find because the works push the violin to its limits. No 17 features fingered octaves and No 19 forces violinists to perform circus-like acrobatics on the G string. Not even Fritz Kreisler, Isaac Stern, Pinchas Zukerman, or Jascha Heifetz have recorded them. Well, I take that back. Heifetz recorded a few of them, but he had a pianist play along on the recording.
The numbers themselves are based on Italian melodies, but with left-hand pizzicato and runs that can barely be imagined, let alone played, it can be very difficult to discern the underlying melodies during a performance, even if the listener is familiar with the melodies. That’s the goal of the performance—to get past the technique and appreciate the tune—and the technical demands draw the ear so strongly that listeners often can’t appreciate the underlying beauty, just the virtuosity of the performer.
But the most-famous last number, No 24, is in a theme-and-variations format, underneath those difficult four-voice chords, which need to be bowed and fingered on all four strings simultaneously. As with any piece in that format, the more contrast the violinist can make apparent to the audience between the variations, the better.
A few violinists and other musicians from Twin Groves were selected to participate last weekend in the Grades 6–8 Illinois Music Education Association’s Band, Orchestra, and Chorus Festival at Maine West High School. Bella Kim, Bridget Zhu, Andrew Lee, Cassie Wang, and Adele Lee played violin in the ILMEA all-District 7 middle school orchestra, and Radha Patel, Erin Yuan, and Stephanie Li played viola. Also representing Twin Groves at the district festival were vocalists Samhita Madduru and Sarah Strezewski and tuba player Shea Flanagan.
Students from Woodlawn Middle School in Long Grove, which is also in Kildeer-Countryside Elementary District 96, also attended Ms Barton Pine’s performance and lecture.
Describe a time when you succeeded even though you thought you might fail. See Common Core writing standard WHST.11-12.4 for more information.
