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HILARY HAHN
YOUNG, GIFTED, AND GRIM
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At 24, Hilary Hahn already has recordings of violin concertos by Shostakovich, Britten, Barber, Mendelssohn, Stravinsky, Beethoven, and Brahms in the catalogue. That alone tells you something about her gifts. Her technique is, if not to die for, at least to get sick with envy over. Her tuning is perfect. In her hands, a violin gleams. And whenever the notes are many, short, and fast, she can go like the very wind. In her Bank of America Celebrity Series Jordan Hall last Saturday night, it was when the notes weren’t many, short, and fast that problems arose. One aspect of Hahn’s basic equipment is her vibrato, which is narrow, fastish, and unrelenting. In her performance of Fauré’s Sonata No. 1, the drawn-out lines of the Andante spoke of introspection and beauty while the vibrato insisted, "Flee! We’re in danger! Flee!" Repose and tranquility might been off somewhere in one of the red states. It’s also the kind of vibrato that injects a surfacy, top-heavy element into the overall sound. Joseph Szigeti, Hans Keller, Gunther Schuller, and others have asserted that the non-stop vibrato is one of the curses of our time. Here, for the prosecution, were Exhibit A, and Exhibit B, and . . . Mozart and Bach rounded out the program. The first of the two Mozart sonatas — in F, K.376 — received no help from Hahn’s pianist, Natalie Zhu, whose delicate, pitter-patter style came out of an earlier era that saw Mozart as an epicene little dear, half marzipan and half Dresden figurine. Zhu and Hahn scurried right through the thing, quashing any suspicion that there were depths to be plumbed. Not so with the other Sonata — in E minor, K.304 — which carries on its surface no small degree of emotion, most of it dark. Hahn and Zhu understood this. They did not rush this opening Allegro off its feet. The Tempo di menuetto second movement was played with manifest affection. For that matter, the Fauré wasn’t catastrophic, though compared with what Grumiaux/Crossley and Thibaud/Cortot have given us on recordings, it was pretty small beer. Where Fauré’s music asked for little in the way of interpretation — as in the first movement — these players were home clear. Yet for all that the Allegro vivo is supposed to go very fast, there must be a way of flinging down an accent or two so that all those syncopations and off-beats (and the sheer irregularity of it all) don’t turn into a gabble. Hahn and Zhu didn’t quite manage this. The Bach was his Sonata No. 3 for Unaccompanied Violin (BWV 1005), in a reverential, quietly luscious, and uneventful performance that suggested Hahn has never heard, or heard of, what historically informed players like Jaap Schroeder, Simon Standage, Sigiswald Kuijken, and Andrew Manze have done with this music. Many violinists live in a bubble, especially the killer-concerto whizzes. It may be time for Hilary Hahn to break out of hers. And by the way, does any photograph exist that shows her smiling?
BY RICHARD BUELL
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