Just a Babe? Or a Great Violinist?

Is prodigy-babe violinist Hilary Hahn just a Britney Spears in Schumann’s clothing, or really as good a musician as all the hype?

Envious folk eager to hear her lambasted will have to look elsewhere. Her performance in a concert last week at Carnegie Hall of Bach, Beethoven, Samuel Barber and Ludwig Spohr was so flawless it almost threw the listener off—one cocked an ear thinking that that it must be a trick and she wasn’t generating the sounds. Her utter assurance reminded me at times of a touch-typist.

What’s the background to all this? Hahn started playing violin just before turning 4-years-old, going on to study under several masters including Klara Berkovich and Jascha Brodsky. At 12, she entered Philadelphia’s famed Curtis Institute, pursuing literature and German in addition to music, and fulfilling her requirements for graduation at age 16.

It was one of her former teachers, legendary Bolivian violinist Jaime Laredo, who was the conductor and Hahn’s partner in her performance of Bach’s demanding Concerto for Two Violins in D minor. During it, the stockier Laredo hunched over his fiddle, his ruddy face, framed by graying hair, plopped on top of the fiddle’s chin rest. With his right leg stretched out in front of him and foot cocked at the heel, he looked like a fighting Irishman—especially when he suddenly turned his body squarely to Hahn, aggressively playing the notes leading to her entry, as if egging her to respond. The older player put more “voice” into his performance, lingering at the end of notes, letting the volume creep up or suddenly drop; he even had a few scratchy notes, and his manner was as relaxed as if he were at a barn dance.

Hahn was quite different. Attired in a pale pink bodice and red brocade skirt, she stood stiffly, her fiddle propped rigidly at her throat, neck elongated and her face expressionless.

The Concerto is a particularly strong duet because both fiddles have a say, calling out the melodic theme before drifting into the background. The first violin part doesn’t hog all the spotlight; rather, both parts echo each other and emphasize the same resounding downbeats. The piece is a beloved duet: one that almost every amateur violinist knows, can hum and is happy to whip out and bow it up. Among other reasons for its popularity, both violins’ first movement parts are featured in the ubiquitous Suzuki method books that even Hilary herself learned from as a young(er) violinist. (The piece is so much fun to play that I once made a guitarist friend spend a semi-successful 45 minutes picking out the second violin part.)

Hahn cherishes Bach, plays his compositions every day, and feels that he is “the touchstone that keeps my playing honest.” When a fourth ovation after her performance of Louis Spohr’s Violin Concerto No. 8 in A minor brought her back out for an encore, she announced in a calmly charming voice, “And now for some more Bach.” In this solo, she allowed her playing to be a bit more expressive and emotive.

I have to conclude that even if her website is rendered in shades of lavender, it’s hard to dismiss a young artist who earnestly presents statements like this: “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.”

Sensible, smart, and gifted—it’s hard to dislike her, despite her fame and good looks. And I couldn’t help but appreciate her website’s unfit-to-print press releases, composed by Hahn herself. Among them was a news item beginning “Guinea pig Psyche, pet of violinist Hilary Hahn, died on July 30, 2004 at the age of 2, of a mysterious digestive disorder.”

While I was sorry to find that Hahn’s just as remarkable as people say she is, the real disappointment of the evening was experienced by my friend Jon; he thought he’d seen a single pearl role down the aisle near his seat, only to find at intermission that it was a rolled up Hershey’s Kiss wrapper.