Spotlight: Hilary Hahn

Hilary Hahn is no ordinary violinist. That much was clear almost from the moment she first picked up the instrument weeks short of her fourth birthday. Aged 10, she became the youngest musician admitted to study at the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where she was taught by the venerable Jascha Brodsky.

The following year she made her professional debut with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and came to international attention with her first appearance in Germany with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in 1995.

Before the decade was out she had released her first CD and the die had been cast for what was to become one of the most significant and influential careers in classical music of the last quarter-century.

The scholastic intensity that marked Hahn’s early performances has given way to a freer, more expressive interpretative approach that has illuminated afresh core repertoire pieces from Bach to Beethoven and Brahms, and all points beyond and in between.

But Hahn is also rooted in the here and now, as the many new works she has commissioned from the most diverse array of contemporary composers from Einojuhani Rautavaara and Mark-Anthony Turnage to Bun-Ching Lam and recent National Concert Hall Artist-in-Residence, Bryce Dessner, amply demonstrates.

Away from the concert platform, Hahn has won three Grammy Awards for her recordings, and is a supportive enthusiast for young musicians, giving countless masterclasses worldwide while also teaching at London’s Royal Academy of Music and New York’s Juilliard School. Her innovative #100DaysofPractice series on Instagram is fast approaching 500,000 followers.

But it is as a virtuoso violinist that Hahn is best known, conductor David Zinman appreciatively observing: ‘With Hilary, there is no façade. Every note is part of her soul. She plays with the mind of a soloist, the ears of a chamber musician, and the humility of an artist who serves the music’.

Having recently returned to performing after seven months away following a double pinched nerve injury, Hahn herself has determined the agenda for whatever lies ahead in her astonishing career: ‘I’m going to stay in every note and see what it wants me to do’.

That aspiration whets the appetite for her National Concert Hall appearance with its Francophile focus on luxurious, open-hearted Violin Sonatas by Ravel, Debussy and Fauré, and Lili Boulanger’s exquisitely delicate Nocturne.

Hahn’s ear always alert to the unfamiliar and the new, there is also the intriguing prospect of two Irish premieres: Chinese composer Bun-Ching Lam’s meditative Solitude d’Automne, and a new work by the eclectic, multi-award-winning French jazz violinist, Scott Tixier, for Hahn and her longtime collaborator, pianist Tom Poster.