Hilary Hahn: Hearing her live

I heard Hilary Hahn last week in a small church in Skaneateles, NY. She started off the program playing JS Bach’s Partita no.3 for solo violin. About a minute into her performance, I realized that I would never be as good as she was playing the violin at anything that I do. It didn’t depress me, it was just a fact! I’m pretty good at playing trumpet and have played it for 55 years, mandolin for about 5 or 6 and I’m content with my progress. It was fun to hear someone at a level orders of magnitude better than I am!

Mandolin content: didn't she and Chris Thile do something together?

Last season I saw Joshua Bell and Itzahk Perlman. Rachel Barton Pine and Hilary Hahn are on my bucket list.

I’m a big HH fan. To watch/hear her is to witness absolute mastery. She puts some of her practice regimen on her instagram stories. It’s a fun peek into that world.

Go see YoYo Ma sometime. Joshua Bell is something, but if you can see his pal Philippe Quint, you should. Hilary Hahn is right up there too. Had SF Symphony season tix in the pre retirement days.

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Originally Posted by Br1ck

Go see YoYo Ma sometime. Joshua Bell is something, but if you can see his pal Philippe Quint, you should. Hilary Hahn is right up there too. Had SF Symphony season tix in the pre retirement days.

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I saw Joshua Bell at Bass Hall in Fort Worth a few years ago. He was playing the music of Max Bruch. It was wonderful.

I saw her perform the same piece at a Prairie Home Companion performance a couple years ago in Pasadena, CA, not long after Chris Thile took over hosting, and it was absolutely breathtaking. Especially because I'd been working out the piece myself on mandolin over the preceding six months and knew every note and nuance by heart. Had the same feeling of "never in this life"...but I swear I'm gonna die tryin'!

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Originally Posted by mrmando

Mandolin content: didn't she and Chris Thile do something together?

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back in 2006 (or so) i was lucky enough to see Ms. Hahn and Mr. Thile together doing a benefit concert at a little bookstore in lower Manhattan. they performed solo and together as well. i was about five feet away from the stage. of course they were both fantastic, but to hear Hilary Hahn up close and personal like that was staggering. there's a reason she has been playing on concert stages all over the world for most of her life... she's staggeringly good! her double-stop virtuosity is something i'll never forget...

Her version of the Bach Chaconne makes me tear up every time. One of my very favorite fiddlers. :)

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Originally Posted by Jim Garber

Her version of the Bach Chaconne makes me tear up every time. One of my very favorite fiddlers. :)

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My violin teacher used to say, "Bach was the first fiddle player".

Yes!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkfsGCIiHb4

Looks like none of us will be hearing Hilary perform this season.
https://theviolinchannel.com/violini...om-performing/

After hearing Anne-Sophie Mutter's recording of Penderecki's Metamorphosen (composed specifically for her), I'm thinking I must try to get round to hear her as well, particularly if she's playing that piece.

Local classical station plays it safe during the day, but at night you're likely to hear just about anything.

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Originally Posted by mrmando

Looks like none of us will be hearing Hilary perform this season.
https://theviolinchannel.com/violini...om-performing/

After hearing Anne-Sophie Mutter's recording of Penderecki's Metamorphosen (composed specifically for her), I'm thinking I must try to get round to hear her as well, particularly if she's playing that piece.

Local classical station plays it safe during the day, but at night you're likely to hear just about anything.

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Good for her.

Yeah, our NPR station plays an awful lot of Lieutenant Kije during the day, but the off-peak times are pretty amazing.

Our NPR station plays Mendelssohn violin concerto every time I turn to that station it seems. Glad I got to see Hilary Hahn twice last month, solo with piano and an all Bach program with orchestra.

I have a ?, I love the video but it seems all classical is note for note with the feeling just as written so was Paganini the first improvisational violinist? I read somewhere in his public performances he would go off the wall so to speak? Just curious as I love classical violin but sure as heck can't play it on the mandolin as I'm a total improvisational bluegrass/country player. I play the way I hear something, sometimes well mostly it works out great.

I sometimes get off the melody a touch but it works out, my mind is scrambled and just can't play something the same way twice usually:whistling:

Does anyone know what kind of violin she is playing, it sounds marvelous!

Prodigy........... she has been great for a long time. As I recall Edgar Meyer wrote a Violin Concerto for her
Once when I saw her with the SF Symphony.... I heard she had been jamming at the Fillmore the night before.

I saw recently that she is going on a yearlong sabbatical. I think it might’ve already started.

Like Doug in post #6 above, I was in the audience when Hilary Hahn walked out on the stage in Pasadena and played this:

There have been improvising violinists as long as there have been violins. When two different violinists play a given concerto, they may play all the same notes, but there are still differences in bowing, expression, vibrato, tone, phrasing and tempo.

People thought Bach's suites for unaccompanied cello were just boring exercise pieces until the late 1930s, Pablo Casals revealed their expressive potential. Now they are among the most familiar classical compositions ever, and certainly the best-known solo works for cello. And yet the various recordings of them are quite distinct from one another.

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Originally Posted by William Smith

I have a ?, I love the video but it seems all classical is note for note with the feeling just as written ...

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Common misconception: with the exception of more modern composers, none of Bach's pieces and probably many of later composers as well, did not indicate "feeling" or even dynamics. Much of that was later published music with editors additions. The heart of the music is truly in the performer. Find some recordings or videos of the same pieces played by different players and you will hear different interpretations. Hahn is exceptional to my ears. She can take that preludio from E major partita and wring true emotion out of it. Electrifying. I would love to see her play on person—after her sabbatical, of course.

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Originally Posted by William Smith

Does anyone know what kind of violin she is playing, it sounds marvelous!

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It ain't no Loar F-5, that's for sure...

According to her wikipedia article her violin is an 1864 copy of Paganini's Cannone made by Vuillaume.

Here is a great quote from her about playing Bach:

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Bach is, for me, the touchstone that keeps my playing honest. Keeping the intonation pure in double stops, bringing out the various voices where the phrasing requires it, crossing the strings so that there are not inadvertent accents, presenting the structure in such a way that it's clear to the listener without being pedantic – one can't fake things in Bach, and if one gets all of them to work, the music sings in the most wonderful way.

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