Short-notice fill-in
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https://www.violinist.com/blog/laurie/20217/28843/
Violinist Rachel Barton Pine Fills in for Midori at Ravinia on 3 1/2 Hrs Notice
July 18, 2021, 3:57 PM · If you were called to perform a solo in a concert at the last minute, could you do it? Even if the concert was in just three and a half hours?
Most of us would have to say "no," but Chicago-based violinist Rachel Barton Pine was ready to answer in the affirmative when the Ravinia Festival called her late Friday to perform Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and conductor Marin Alsop - that very night.
Rachel was filling in for violinist Midori, recent Kennedy Center Honoree who had withdrawn from the Friday performance due to illness, according to the Ravinia Facebook page.
The orchestra had already rehearsed with Midori, and there was actually no time before the performance to have a formal rehearsal with Rachel, who was dashing to Ravinia in her car when she posted to Instagram that she was "...studying Prokofiev 1 as I drive to go perform with @marinalsop.conductor and @chicagosymphony on 3.5 hours notice!"
One reason Rachel was prepared for this moment - beyond her high level of training, experience and long devotion to the instrument - was her pandemic project, 24 in 24: Concertos from the Inside. For that project, she performed 24 different violin concertos, live and unaccompanied, over 24 weeks from January through June 2021 - performing from her living room.
Prokofiev's first violin concerto happened to be featured on Week 9 in March. It's a piece she said she's been playing for some three decades, and among other things she tells a fascinating history of its early 20th-century premiere, which was delayed due to the Russian Revolution.
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I saw Barton-Pine about 5 years ago. I wrote about it here.
In that thread, I commented on her injury.
On January 16, 1995, Pine was severely injured in a train accident in the suburb of Winnetka, where she taught violin lessons. As she was exiting a Metra commuter train with her violin over her shoulder, the doors closed on the strap to her case, pinning her left shoulder to the train. The doors, which were controlled remotely and had no safety sensors, failed to reopen, and she was dragged 366 feet (112 meters) by the train before being pulled underneath and run over, severing one leg and mangling the other. Pine was saved by the prompt application of tourniquets by several passengers who disembarked from the train after pulling its emergency brake handles.
She sued Metra and the Chicago and North Western Transportation Company for compensation for her injuries and legal and medical expenses. Metra argued that she made the choice not to extricate her arm from the strap of the violin case due to the value of the instrument, a 400-year-old Amati valued at around $500,000, and thus she carried most of the blame for her injuries. The jury ruled in Pine's favor. Metra changed its conductor safety procedures following the incident and made other changes to the trains themselves.
Daniel Barenboim, the conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, organized a benefit concert and raised over $75,000 after she was injured.[43] After a two-year hiatus to allow for recovery from her injuries, aided by numerous surgeries and physical therapy, Pine resumed her career.
