Hilary Hahn
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hilary Hahn (born November 27, 1979 in Lexington, Virginia) is an American Grammy Award–winning violinist.
Contents |
[edit] Biography
Born into a Lutheran family, Hahn moved to Baltimore, Maryland at the age of three and began playing the violin one month before her fourth birthday in the Suzuki Program of Baltimore’s Peabody Conservatory (Sony Bio).
Hahn became interested in the violin after taking a walk with her father in their Baltimore neighborhood (Zaustinsky 1999). The two passed a branch of the Peabody Conservatory that advertised music lessons for four-year-olds and observed a music lesson where a young boy was playing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Hahn began taking lessons the following week and participated in a Suzuki class for about a year. Hahn’s first solo recital occurred when she was ten and included a Handel Sonata, the "Siciliano" and Presto from J.S.Bach’s unaccompanied Sonata in G Minor, the Wieniawski Caprice in A Minor, the Vitali Chaconne, Glière Romance, and other short pieces (Zaustinsky 1999). Between 1984 and 1989 Hahn studied in Baltimore under the direction of Klara Berkovich. In 1990, at the age of ten, Hahn was admitted to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia where she became a student of Jascha Brodsky. Hahn studied with Brodsky for seven years and learned the etudes of Kreutzer, Ševčík, Gaviniès, Rode, as well as the Paganini Caprices. She also learned about twenty-eight violin concertos, recital programs, and several other short pieces (Zaustinsky 1999).
Hahn’s first two years at Curtis were spent commuting twice a week to and from Philadelphia and Baltimore while being home-schooled (Zaustinsky 1999). In 1991, Hahn made her first major orchestral debut with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Soon thereafter, Hahn debuted with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, and the New York Philharmonic. In 1992, she began working towards the Curtis Bachelor’s degree at the age of twelve while taking college courses to fulfill her high school requirements.
In 1995 Hahn made her international debut in Germany with a performance of the Beethoven Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D Major with Lorin Maazel and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. The concert was broadcast on radio and television throughout Europe. A year later, Hahn debuted at Carnegie Hall in New York as a soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra.
By the age of sixteen, Hahn had completed the Curtis Institute's university requirements, but elected to remain at the Institute for several more years to pursue additional elective courses, until her graduation in May of 1999 with a Bachelor Of Music degree. During this time she regularly coached violin with Jaime Laredo, and studied chamber music with Felix Galimir and Gary Graffman. In an interview with PBS in December 2001, Hahn stated that of all the musical disciplines, she is most interested in musical performance (PBS Interview).
Hahn has played with orchestras such as the London Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, just to name a few. She will be performing with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in March of 2007.
[edit] Career
In 2001, Time Magazine named Hahn as “America’s Best” young classical musician [1]. Throughout her career, Hahn has performed with numerous orchestras around the globe. She previously recorded five albums with Sony Classical, but now records exclusively for Deutsche Grammophon.
In 1996 Sony Music signed Hahn to an exclusive recording contract, which made her one of the youngest exclusive artists in the label’s history. Hahn’s first recording, released in 1997, featured selected solo sonatas and partitas by J.S. Bach, and spent weeks as a bestseller on the Billboard classical charts. Her following recording was released in 1999, and included the Beethoven Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D Major, as well as Leonard Bernstein’s Serenade for Solo Violin, Strings, Harp, and Percussion. This compilation earned Hahn her first Grammy nomination for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance with Orchestra. The album also appeared as a classical bestseller on the international record charts. In September 1999, Hahn gave the world premiere performance of the Edgar Meyer Violin Concerto with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Hugh Wolff. Meyer commissioned and wrote the violin concerto specifically for Hahn. A week after the live performance, Hahn recorded Meyer’s work along with Samuel Barber’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra. The two pieces were released by Sony Classical in March 2000 and would later spend several weeks on the Billboard classical charts. The recordings earned Hahn the German Music Critics’ Award and a cover story in the magazine Gramophone. Hahn won a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance (with orchestra) for her fourth album released in 2001, which featured Johannes Brahms' Concerto in D Major for Violin and Orchestra and the Stravinsky Concerto in D for Violin and Orchestra. The album was also Hahn’s fourth consecutive classical bestseller.
In addition to being a solo violinist, Hahn has also performed as a chamber musician. Since the summer of 1992 she has performed nearly every year with the Skaneateles Chamber Music Festival in Skaneateles, New York. Between 1995 and 2000 she spent performing and studying chamber music at the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont, and in 1996 she served as an artist and a member of the chamber music mentoring program of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
[edit] From Sony Classical to Deutsche Grammophon
Hahn signed with Deutsche Grammophon in 2003 after her contract with Sony expired in 2002. After Hahn completed her part of the contract with Sony, which was for five recordings over six years, she decided against renewing the contract due to the fact that she and Sony did not agree on her future projects (Lark Ascending).
[edit] Personal
In an interview with Strings Magazine conducted in 1999, Hahn cited several people as being influential on her development as a musician and a student. Two of these influences include David Zinman, the conductor of the Baltimore Symphony and Hahn’s mentor since she was ten, and Lorin Maazel, with whom she worked in Europe with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. In the interview, Hahn also stated that she enjoys watching movies, reading, and writing in her free time. Other hobbies that she lists include: meeting new people, exploring cities, ballet, working out, swimming, and bike riding. She also enjoys animals and rowing (The Daily Princetonian).
[edit] What she plays
Hilary Hahn plays an 1864 Vuillaume violin that was formerly owned by the Russian violinist Samuel Lande who was a friend of Klara Berkovich, Hahn’s first teacher. Hahn uses Dominant strings and bows by French bow makers Paul Jombar and Emil Miquel (Zaustinsky 1999).
[edit] Hilary’s Journal
Hahn’s official website includes a unique section entitled “Hilary’s Journal”. In the Strings Magazine interview, Hahn stated that the idea originated while she was participating in a community outreach program for a third-grade class in upstate New York. The class that she visited was doing a geography project in which students of the class asked everyone that they knew who was traveling internationally to send postcards from the cities that they were visiting. The goal was to help the students to better learn about international cities around the globe. Hahn decided to participate after receiving a positive reaction from her suggestion that she take part as well (Zaustinsky 1999). Hahn enjoyed her first year’s experience with the project so much that she decided to continue it. Because the teacher of the original third-grade glass was retiring, Hahn wanted to expand the project’s scale. She worked with Sony to establish “Hilary’s Journal”, a collection of electronic postcards that she periodically posts to her official website informing readers of her travels. Journal entries usually include photographs that Hahn takes while touring the city and during rehearsals. The first entry in Hilary’s Journal dates back to January 6, 2002, when she was visiting Copenhagen, Denmark. Another interesting feature of Hahn’s official website is a “Weekly Items” section that lists what she is currently reading, practicing, listening to, and watching.
[edit] On playing Bach
As of 1999, Hahn has stated that she plays Bach more than any other composer and that she has played solo Bach pieces every day since she was eight (Zaustinsky 1999). The following is an excerpt from the liner notes to Hahn’s album Hilary Hahn Plays Bach:
"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." (Saint Paul’s Sunday)
In a segment on NPR entitled “Musicians in Their Own Words”, Hahn speaks about the surreal experience of playing the Bach Chaconne (from the Solo Violin Partita No. 2) alone on the concert stage. In the same segment, she also discusses her experiences emulating a lark while playing The Lark Ascending by Ralph Vaughan Williams. The complete transcript can be found here: Musicians in Their Own Words
[edit] Discography
- Hilary Hahn Plays Bach (1997)
- Hilary Hahn, violin
- Beethoven Violin Concerto/Bernstein Serenade (1999)
- Hilary Hahn, violin
- Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
- David Zinman, conductor
- Grammy Nominee - Best Instrumental Soloist Performance with Orchestra
- Barber & Meyer Violin Concertos (2000)
- Hilary Hahn, violin
- Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra
- Hugh Wolff, conductor
- Brahms & Stravinsky Violin Concertos (2001)
- Hilary Hahn, violin
- Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields
- Sir Neville Marriner, conductor
- Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance (with orchestra)
- Mendelssohn & Shostakovich Concertos (2002)
- Hilary Hahn, violin
- Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra
- Marek Janowski and Hugh Wolff, conductors
- Bach Concertos (2003)
- Hilary Hahn, violin
- Margaret Batjer, violin; Allan Vogel, oboe
- Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra
- Jeffrey Kahane, conductor
- The Village (film) Motion Picture Soundtrack (2004)
- Hilary Hahn, featured violinist
- Music composed by James Newton Howard
- Elgar: Violin Concerto; Vaughan Williams: The Lark Ascending (2004)
- Hilary Hahn, violin
- London Symphony Orchestra
- Colin Davis, conductor
- Mozart Violin Sonatas (2005)
- Hilary Hahn, violin; Natalie Zhu, piano
- "To Russia My Homeland" from the album Worlds Apart by ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead (2005)
- Paganini: Violin Concerto No. 1 / Spohr: Violin Concerto No. 8 - Gesangsszene (2006)
- Hilary Hahn, violin
- Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra
- Eiji Oue, conductor
- "Witch's Web" from the album So Divided by ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead (2006)
[edit] References
- ^ Teachout, Terry (2001). America's Best. Time Magazine. Retrieved on 2006-03-21.
- HilaryHahn.com Biography. Retrieved from the World Wide Web on December 14, 2005: [1]
- (Lady Ascending) Hilary Hahn - The Lady Ascending: An interview with Réjean Beaucage, November 5, 2003. From ‘’La Scena Musicale’’ Vol. 9, No. 3. Retrieved from the World Wide Web on December 14, 2005: [2]
- (NPR) Musicians in their own Words. Features in the Series produced by David Schulman and Jeffrey Freymann-Weyr. Retrieved from the World Wide Web on December 14, 2005: [3]
- (PBS Interview) Great Performances. Dialogue. The Art of Violin. Hilary Hahn. Retrieved from the World Wide Web on December 14, 2005: [4]
- (Saint Paul’s Sunday) American Public Media: Saint Paul’s Sunday. Retrieved from the World Wide Web on December 14, 2005 [5]
- (Sony Bio) SonyClassical Hilary Hahn Biography. Retrieved from the World Wide Web on December 14, 2005: [6]
- (The Daily Princetonian) Ross, Adrian. The Daily Princetonian Q&A: A moment with Hilary Hahn. Retrieved from the World Wide Web on December 14, 2005: [7]
- Zaustinsky, Julia. All Things Strings Cover Story: Hilary Hahn: Fulfilling her Promise. Excerpted from ‘’Strings Magazine’’ August/September 1999, No. 80. Retrieved from the World Wide Web on December 14, 2005: [8]
- Reel, James. A Star Ascending. Excerpted from ‘’Strings Magazine’’ January 2005, No. 125.[9]
