Ever since Rachel Barton first performed as an 8-year-old soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the music-loving world has expected greatness from her.
They most likely will not be disappointed Sunday when, six months to the day after she was seriously injured in a Metra train accident, the 20-year-old artist will return to the stage in a performance with the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra at Grant Park.
A perfectionist as well as a prodigy, Barton can boast confidently that despite her tragedy, she has plenty of “technique to spare.”
But what does weigh heavily on the violinist’s mind as she anticipates her performance is reconciling her sudden attention as a very public accident victim with the reality: a future superstar, perhaps, but today still a work in progress, as an artist and an adult.
It is an unfair position for the young violinist and a difficult balance to maintain, as she confronts the possibility of a diminished career and the loss of some measure of independence.
In an interview, Barton was uncomfortable answering questions about the accident and how it may have changed her. If she did not always articulate her feelings, the message was clear: Why couldn’t this be an interview only about music?
But then reality intrudes. The concert will present practical worries, Barton recognized. How, for example, will she acknowledge the applause of the audience from her wheelchair?
“(Itzhak) Perlman has it easier than me at this point because he stands up to take a bow. I’m going to have to somehow take a bow from the chair. It’s going to be a little weird,” she said with a frown, sitting in her black wheelchair.
Barton had hoped several months ago that she would be able to walk onto the stage with the help of an artificial limb; most of her left leg was severed, and her right foot was badly injured when she was pulled under the wheels of the train.
But “that’s not even close to being a possibility,” she acknowledged. A recent bone infection has delayed her physical therapy at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago’s Medical Program for Performing Artists.
That intense disappointment has made the young concertmistress uncomfortable for the first time in the public eye.
Barton’s mother, Amy, said her daughter has been freed in recent weeks from the side effects of strong painkillers, and the “real Rachel is coming back.”
But what might be emerging is the new Rachel.
Wanting more than anything to be the “red-haired violinist from Chicago,” rather than a musician who overcame a devastating disability, Barton summarily dismisses seemingly innocuous questions:
How long each day can you now practice?
She changes the subject.
Can you tell us something about your physical therapy regimen?
“No, I’d rather not.”
Are you angry about the accident?
“The most important thing is to make sure this never happens to anyone else.”
While pleased to be performing in concert again, playing Dvorak’s Violin Concerto in a free concert at 5 p.m. Sunday in Grant Park’s Petrillo Music Shell, Barton insisted that the event does not even come close to representing her comeback, despite billing as such.
“I have not in the least gone back to my normal life,” Barton said in the ornate parlor of Bein & Fushi, a Michigan Avenue instrument broker, where she had gone Wednesday to have her $350,000 Amati, an antique Italian violin, tuned up for the concert.
“I’m going to have this one concert, which was talked about before the accident happened, and then that’s it. I’ll be in rehab the rest of the summer,” she said, wheeling toward a table that held her violin case, decorated with colorful patches emblazoned with the names of such heavy metal bands as Metallica, Judas Priest and Guns N’ Roses. It is the same violin case that became trapped in the closing doors of the train Jan. 16 at the Elm Street station in Winnetka.
Barton said she has enjoyed the energy and enthusiasm of the teenage musicians she has worked with in preparing the Youth Symphony. But the concert that occupies Barton’s thoughts these days is her subsequent performance-the one that, because of her day-to-day medical condition, cannot yet be scheduled.
“We won’t know until much later the extent to which the accident has affected the course of my career,” said Barton, who declined to talk about the incident because she has a lawsuit pending against Metra and the Chicago and North Western Transportation Co.
“Obviously, for the short term, I’ve lost a number of opportunities,” she said, “like my second CD, which was supposed to have been recorded in February, and subbing with the Chicago Symphony. Everything’s been put on hold indefinitely.”
Metra officials also have declined to talk about the accident because of the lawsuit. But earlier, spokesmen for the commuter rail service contended that the violin case, apparently strapped to Barton’s back, became stuck in the train’s doors because she arrived in the vestibule too late to disembark.
Barton’s attorneys have denied that, saying faulty equipment and possibly human error were to blame.
While welcoming media publicity for the upcoming concert, Barton said that the media often become fixated on the unimportant questions and have paid attention to her for all the wrong reasons.
Please do not ask her anymore if she is still in pain or if she remembers being dragged 200 feet by the slow-moving train. (The answers to both still are, and always will be, “Yes, yes.”)
“At my first press conference (in March), reporters kept asking, `How has your violin helped get you through this terrible ordeal?’
“I stared back at them and said, `What do you mean? In the beginning, the violin was just sitting there in its case,’ ” Barton said.
She said she has received great comfort from all the people, from members of her church to strangers, “who have been there for me. It’s been the most amazing, affirming experience.”
She noted with bitter irony that in 1993, when she was the only American prize-winner at the most prestigious violin competition in the world, the Queen Elisabeth of Belgium, the U.S. press virtually ignored her.
“It was like the Olympics for the violin, and everybody was saying to me, `Where’s your country?’ Well, sorry, kid. You’re not a basketball player . . . so it’s kind of ironic that here today is the press (coverage) I perhaps should have gotten then, and yet it came about in such a silly way,” she said.
She credited her deep religious faith and her dedication to music with taking her beyond the constant physical pain and through the boring but essential daily exercise regimens.
“The discipline of practicing all those years prepared me to focus on a long-term goal rather than immediate gratification,” she said. “I’m not going to start complaining and wimping out now.”
