Event Archives

Rachel Barton Pine with Gilles Vonsattel, piano

Striking and charismatic… she demonstrated a bravura technique and soulful musicianship.

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Rachel Barton Pine is one of the world’s leading violinists and a celebrated interpreter of the great Romantic masterworks. Hailed by The Washington Post for performing with “a power and confidence that puts her in the top echelon,” Barton Pine opens the 80th anniversary season of the Chamber Arts Series with her Duke debut.

Her thrilling program features three of Brahms’s richly expressive violin sonatas. Violin Sonata No. 1 was actually Brahms’s fifth attempt at the form—his perfectionism led him to destroy four earlier versions. Inspired by two of his songs, Regenlied and Nachklang, its rain-like motif casts a nostalgic haze.

The program continues with a transcription of Brahms’s Second Clarinet Sonata, written near the end of his life, and ends with his third and final violin sonata. Composed during a productive summer in 1886, this last sonata is the most extroverted of the three: dramatic, intense, and closing with a fiery tarantella. 

Program

Brahms

Sonata #1, G Major, Op. 78
Sonata #5, E-flat Major, Op. 120, #2
Sonata #3, D minor, Op. 108

About Rachel Barton Pine

The acclaimed American 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. She is a leading interpreter of the great classical masterworks as well as groundbreaking contemporary music.

Pine performs with the world’s foremost orchestras, including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Camerata Salzburg, and the Chicago, Vienna, and Detroit symphony orchestras. She has worked with renowned conductors that include Teddy Abrams, Marin Alsop, Daniel Barenboim, Semyon Bychkov, Neeme Järvi, Christoph Eschenbach, Erich Leinsdorf, Nicholas McGegan, Zubin Mehta, Tito Muñoz, and John Nelson. As a chamber musician, Pine has performed with Jonathan Gilad, Clive Greensmith, Paul Neubauer, Jory Vinikour, William Warfield, Orion Weiss, and the Pacifica and Parker quartets.

Highlights of Pine’s 2024–25 season include the Chicago Symphony Orchestra premiere of José White’s Violin Concerto in F-sharp Minor; a tour of Israel with the Tel Aviv Soloists Ensemble; Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnole with the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra; the world premiere of Haralabos [Harry] Stafylakis’ Violin Concerto with the Winnipeg Symphony; Billy Childs’ Violin Concerto No. 2 with the Rhode Island Philharmonic; and the French premiere of Earl Maneein’s violin concerto Dependent Arising with the Orchestre National de Bretagne. Over the season, Pine will also perform concertos by Brahms and Sibelius, in addition to other notable works by Wynton Marsalis, Jessie Montgomery, and Mark O’Connor, among other living composers.

She performs on the “ex-Bazzini, ex-Soldat” Joseph Guarnerius “del Gesù” (Cremona 1742), on lifetime loan from an anonymous patron.

Artist Website | Facebook | Instagram

About Gilles Vonsattel

Swiss-born American pianist Gilles Vonsattel is the recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Andrew Wolf Chamber Music Award, the winner of the Naumburg and Geneva competitions, and a laureate of the Cleveland, Dublin, and Honens competitions. He’s performed with the Munich Philharmonic, the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg, and the Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Montreal, and San Francisco symphony orchestras, and he’s appeared in recitals and chamber music concerts at Chamber Music Northwest; Music@Menlo; the Ravinia, Lucerne, Bravo! Vail Music, and Santa Fe Chamber Music festivals; Tokyo’s Musashino Hall; and London’s Wigmore Hall.

Vonsattel has premiered numerous works in the United States and Europe, and he’s worked closely with such notable composers as Jörg Widmann, Heinz Holliger, Anthony Cheung, and George Benjamin. Recent highlights include a performance of Carlos Chávez’s Piano Concerto in Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium with The Orchestra Now, a debut at Mainly Mozart in San Diego, a critically acclaimed recording of music by Richard Strauss and Kurt Leimer with The Bern Symphony Orchestra and Mario Venzago for the Schweizer Fonogramm label. In 2025, Vonsattel begins a three year complete Beethoven piano sonatas cycle for Camerata Pacifica, where he is principal pianist.  He will perform the entire cycle over the 2026-7 season for both Music@Menlo and at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

Gilles Vonsattel received his bachelor’s degree in political science and economics from Columbia University and his master’s degree from The Juilliard School. He’s a professor of piano at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He makes his home in New York City and western MA.

Artist Website

Subscribe & Save!

Current subscribers can now renew online! Choose all 8 Chamber Arts Series concerts for $300, 7 for $262.50, or 6 for $225.

Not a subscriber yet? New subscriptions are now open! Save 20%, enjoy priority seating, and get 15% off other performances in the Duke Arts Presents 2025–26 Season.

When
  • Sat, Sep 6, 2025 at 7:30pm
Where

Baldwin Auditorium
1336 Campus Drive
Durham, NC 27705

Learn about construction and parking details near Baldwin Auditorium

Venue Details
Ticket prices
  • $47Tier 1
  • $35Tier 2
  • $10*Students
Subscriptions available now.
SUBSCRIPTIONS
Book all 8 Chamber Arts Series concerts for $300, 7 for $262.50 or 6 for $225

Save up to 20% when you book 4 or more shows at once!
Notes

Duke employees save 25% on single tickets. 

*All high school and college students are eligible for student tickets with valid ID shown at event. 

Duke students and employees, Log in through Shibboleth to access Duke-exclusive discounts.

More From the Chamber Arts Series

More Contemporary Classical Events

Akropolis Reed Quintet

Akropolis Reed Quintet

Friday, January 23 at 7:30pm

Described by BBC Music Magazine as a ‘sonically daring ensemble’, the Akropolis Reed Quintet has commissioned more than 150 new works by living composers for their distinctive instrumentation: oboe, clarinet, bass clarinet, saxophone, and bassoon. This program pairs exciting new works with arrangements of Gershwin and Ravel.

The Ciompi Quartet: Memories and Aspirations

The Ciompi Quartet: Memories and Aspirations

Saturday, February 21 at 7:30pm

Duke’s resident Ciompi Quartet revisits “Memoirs,” a 2003 composition by the late Paul Schoenfield. Works by Bach and Schubert round out the program.

The Treachery of Sounds

The Treachery of Sounds
Theatre of Music

February 27 – February 28

Theatre of Music has joined forces with composer Steven Bryant to create an immersive, multi-disciplinary work inspired by Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte.

Manhattan Chamber Players

Manhattan Chamber Players

Sunday, March 8 at 7:00pm

Manhattan Chamber Players bring together accomplished soloists and ensemble musicians, combining their talents in a flexible line-up that brings fresh vitality to chamber music. They present a pair of piano quintets by Weinberg and Brahms.

Doric String Quartet

Doric String Quartet

Friday, March 27 at 7:30pm

Praised for their ‘sumptuous sweetness and laser-like clarity’ (BBC Music Magazine), Doric String Quartet has earned international acclaim. Tracing a lineage of musical invention, the quartet’s program spans the work of Bach, Haydn, and Beethoven.