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Stories   >   Rachel Barton Pine chats about 'Dependent Arising' with NYC's 89.9WKCR

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Rachel Barton Pine chats about 'Dependent Arising' with NYC's 89.9WKCR

Posted: November 30, 2023
Interview with WKCR

Heralded as a leading interpreter of the great classical masterworks, concert violinist Rachel Barton Pine thrills international audiences with her dazzling technique, lustrous tone, and emotional honesty. With an infectious joy in music-making and a passion for connecting historical research to performance, Pine transforms audiences’ experiences of classical music. Pine performs with the world’s leading orchestras including the Philadelphia Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Camerata Salzburg, and the Chicago, Vienna, and Detroit Symphony Orchestras. She has worked with renowned conductors including Teddy Abrams, Marin Alsop, Daniel Barenboim, Semyon Bychkov, Neeme Ja¨rvi, Christoph Eschenbach, Erich Leinsdorf, Nicholas McGegan, Zubin Mehta, Tito Mun~oz, and John Nelson. She frequently performs music by contemporary composers, including major works written for her by Billy Childs, Mohammed Fairouz, Marcus Goddard, Earl Maneein, Shawn E. Okpebholo, Daniel Bernard Roumain, José Serebrier, and Augusta Read Thomas. She has recorded over 40 acclaimed albums, many of which have hit the top of the charts. Most recently, in 2022 Cedille Records released her Violin Concertos by Black Composers Through the Centuries: 25th Anniversary Edition, which features a new recording of Florence Price’s Violin Concerto No. 2 with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Jonathon Heyward. She has appeared on The Today Show, CBS Sunday Morning, CNN, PBS NewsHour, A Prairie Home Companion, and NPR’s Tiny Desk. Her RBP Foundation assists young artists through its Instrument Loan Program and Grants for Education and Career, and since 2001, has run the groundbreaking Music by Black Composers project. She performs on the “ex-Bazzini, ex-Soldat” Joseph Guarnerius “del Gesù” (Cremona 1742), on lifetime loan from her anonymous patron. 

Pine's Cedille Records releases: ‘Dependent Arising’ is the violinist's 24th recording with the label. The album, inspired by the surprising consequences between classical and heavy metal music, pairs Dmitri Shostakovich's Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 77 with Earl Maneein's “Dependent Arising” — Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, a heavy metal-influenced classical concerto written expressly for Pine, performed with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra (RSNO) conducted by Tito Muñoz. Dependent Arising will be released on Friday, August 11.

While Rachel Barton Pine is widely known for her virtuosic and expressive performances of works from the Western classical music canon, she is also a heavy metal enthusiast and performer of the genre. Pine discovered her love for heavy metal as a teenager, and later performed at rock radio stations where she would intersperse her own arrangements of her favorite metal songs by Black Sabbath, AC/DC, and Metallica with works by Paganini and Ysaÿe in order to introduce new listeners to classical music. From 2009–2014 she was a member of the acclaimed doom/thrash metal band Earthen Grave, playing 6-string electric violin. With Dependent Arising, Pine explores connections between modern classical music and heavy metal and showcases her own unique journey within these two seemingly disparate genres.

The album explores themes of struggle, oppression, and defiance, which define Shostakovich’s oeuvre and resonate deeply with the essence of heavy metal music. Now a staple of the classical concerto repertory, Shostakovich's emotionally charged Violin Concerto No. 1 holds a special place among metal enthusiasts, with its diverse movements ranging from the haunting Nocturne to the relentless Burlesque. In her personal note for the album booklet, Pine writes: “There is perhaps no classical composer who is more beloved to metalheads than Shostakovich… What is it about Shostakovich’s music that causes this visceral response? Some music is designed to entertain us, to uplift us, to comfort us. Other music challenges us and makes us think by making us feel uncomfortable. Shostakovich’s complex music is defiant in the face of oppression. Perhaps that is the basis for its incredible appeal to heavy metal fans.”

Earl Maneein is an acclaimed violinist and composer known for his unique and innovative fusion of western classical music, heavy metal, and hardcore punk. “Dependent Arising” was originally commissioned by Tito Muñoz for Pine after he heard her play one of Maneein’s metal-inspired solo violin pieces, which she had commissioned. The work pushes the boundaries of traditional concerto composition and draws inspiration from the world of “Extreme Metal,” the Western European classical music tradition, and the composer’s practice as a Buddhist. The concerto elevates the rhythmic patterns and aggression of various heavy music subgenres to an expanded realm of storytelling. In his program notes for the album booklet, Maneein asks:

“How do you express pain and violence musically? How do you create catharsis for these negative states? The possible ways to express these feelings in music, as in any language, are limited and therefore are bound to have independently evolved similarities… These commonalities make it clear to me why Rachel chose to pair her excellent performance of the Shostakovich First Violin Concerto with my piece. I use the language of extreme music to fuel my work. I draw on my Buddhist practice of dealing with pain, violence, suffering, and death as inspiration. Both of these violin concertos share expressions of terror, hatred, fear, horror, and sorrow as their primary mover.”

Pine sat down with 89.9WKCR: NYC to discuss the recording. Listen to the attached interview