Rambling, hefty, fond
of long phrases—there's something about Edward Elgar's Violin
Concerto that seems like old man's music (Elgar was well into middle
age when he wrote it in 1910). Yet the work has long attracted young
soloists; two of its most famous recordings are by a boyish Yehudi
Menuhin and an only slightly more mature Nigel Kennedy. And now, at
age 24, Hilary Hahn makes it the prime attraction on her latest Deutsche
Grammophon CD, coupled with The Lark Ascending by Ralph Vaughan Williams.
Although Hahn came to
the Elgar concerto fairly late by her standards—it was not a
piece she studied as a teenager at the Curtis Institute with Jascha
Brodsky—she says it feels like a perfectly mainstream old favorite.
"It has a feeling of antiquity about it, like when you pick up
an old book and smell the paper," she says. "Something about
it is really reminiscent of an earlier era, and I really feel a connection
to the music written between about 1850 and World War I, and the musicians
born during that period."
Hahn's first recording,
at age 16, was very poised and classical solo Bach. But in the intervening
years she has become more of a Romantic at heart, according to Thomas
Frost, who has produced all of her CDs. "She was already incredibly
mature at 16," he says, "but she has developed a great ability
to express Romantic music, which is understandable because as a young
woman these aspects come to the forefront. She brought quite a bit
of romanticism to the Elgar concerto and The Lark Ascending. But she
has not overdone that at the expense of musical sensibilities. Her
Beethoven is not overly romantic, as it would have been played by
Kreisler or Menuhin. Her Barber is quite romantic, but again in a
restrained manner. Her Mendelssohn is very, very Classical."
So expressive balance
remains one of Hahn's central concerns in her new English recording.
She's attuned to other kinds of balance, as well. "These are
very different pieces that you have to approach from entirely different
directions," she says. "The Elgar is a very challenging
big piece, and you have to pace it carefully so it holds together
and makes sense. It's tempting to pour everything into it all the
time, but you have to time it out. It needs to be free, but it also
needs to be logical; it's a study in opposites.
"The Lark has so
many contrasts, but you have to make them work as one, so it's the
opposite problem. The Lark has so many moods, so many approaches and
techniques, yet it all has to flow smoothly from one thing to the
next."
Because it contains so
many very quiet passages, says Hahn, The Lark Ascending is much easier
to put across in a recording than in concert. "When you're recording,
when you play quietly the microphones can always hear it," she
says. "But in the hall, if you play virtually nothing, like you
need to in this, nobody will hear it, or at least they won't catch
the nuances. It's no more difficult to play softly than loudly; the
real problem here is something else. Mrs. [Klara] Berkovich, my first
teacher, said what shows a true musician is that you can sustain a
long line in a slow section.
"So something like
this that sounds easy because it's slow is really sometimes the hardest
thing to play. I guess that would be the main challenge for the Lark,
because it's mostly slow, but there are also faster sections, and
for every meditative, recitativelike section, there's something that
needs to be played in exact rhythms.
"The whole thing
gives the impression of being reflective, but like a painting or sculpture
you have to have foreground, background, and texture."
She's had plenty of time
to gain perspective on The Lark Ascending. "I'd heard it since
I was a little kid," says Hahn. "It was one of my mom's
favorite pieces. My dad made her a cassette of all the different Lark
recordings he could find; she'd listen to them at night so she could
drift off in a cloud of lark music. But in all that time I'd never
heard a real lark."
To prepare for her recording
with Sir Colin Davis and the London Symphony Orchestra, Hahn listened
to recordings of lark song, she read up on larks and their vocal patterns,
and she read the George Meredith poem that inspired the music. "That
changed things a little for me," she says, "but it didn't
really change my interpretation of the piece. It just gave me another
angle to think about."
"She's very serious,"
says pianist Gary Graffman, the head of the Curtis Institute, who
has known Hahn's playing since he was "bowled over" by her
Curtis audition when she was ten. "She reads about what was going
on outside of music at the time the composer was writing, and she's
interested in other works the composer wrote, not just for her instrument.
Her approach is analytical and serious; she listens to many recordings,
but she knows what she wants to do, and is in the good sense stubborn
about it."
"And she's usually
right."
Says producer Frost, "She's
very, very assertive in a recording session because she comes very
well prepared and has chosen a narrow path for herself, and she's
very determined to achieve the direction she has chosen. She listens
carefully to objective criticism and considers it, but she takes direction
only to a certain extent. She knows her own reasons for doing what
she wants to do."
What Hahn decidedly did
not want to do early in her career was establish herself as
a virtuosic firebrand prodigy. Only this fall has she started touring
with Paganini's Violin Concerto No. 1, which she'll record in the
coming year with Spohr's Violin Concerto No. 8, once she finishes
a disc of Mozart sonatas. Hahn maintains that it's not a huge leap
from the lyrical Lark Ascending to Paganini's showy concerto.
"What sticks in people's
minds about Paganini is the difficult technique," she says. "But
for me the technical sections are just the bridges between the lyrical
sections. And that makes it harder; you still have to practice the
technique, but it's not the main thing. You have to think, how do
I make these simple, straightforward melodies compelling? How do I
make them stick in people's minds, rather than the technique? I try
to be as technically accurate as possible, but that's a secondary
goal. Music is emotional not because it's fiery, but because it strikes
different nerves at different times. Paganini might seem like a change
for me, but it's really just a progression."
Another fiendishly difficult
composition she's starting to work on is the Schoenberg concerto.
"It's a beast to learn," she admits.
Hahn has already worked
her way through most of the standard repertory, and she got a head
start on less usual fare under Brodsky. So she's always on the lookout
for unusual new projects, and makes no apology for her restlessness.
"I get antsy when things seem easy," says Hahn. "I
don't like it when something starts to feel natural. I know from experience
that the second things start to feel good or I start to take something
for granted, that's when things start to disintegrate."
In the summer, she usually
refreshes herself by taking classes in fields not directly related
to music—languages, literature, history, sociology. This past
summer she took a series of art classes, focusing on stained glass,
mosaic tile, stone carving, print making, and welding; one of her
first projects, unfortunately, was welding a casket for her guinea
pig, Psyche.
In terms of music, she's
also exploring new territory. She's featured in James Newton Howard's
score for M. Night Shyamalan's latest film, The Village. She
also makes a cameo appearance on the new album from the Austin, Texas,
indie rock group And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead. "The
lead singer is taking viola lessons and loves classical music,"
says Hahn. "I met him when he came to my concert in Tyler, Texas,
and I asked if I could play on his next album. It's a waltz melody
he wrote in his classical composition class."
Apparently this is not
much of a stylistic stretch for Hahn, but in any case she's determined
not to be snobbish. "Music is music," she declares. "It's
just that different people appreciate different aspects of it. Every
person I work with teaches me something new. There are so many different
experiences you go through in the course of a month, living out of
suitcases, working with different people—it changes you in a
way you don't realize. I can't define how I'm different from five
years ago, but I know I have a different perspective on almost everything.
Since I graduated from Curtis, I've become more aware of how everything
works. When you don't have lessons and classes anymore, you're free
to do what you want, but you have to figure out your own methods,
your own pacing, what to focus on.
"I've learned a lot
already," she adds, "but I'll never learn everything I want
to know in my lifetime. I'm very far from being an expert in anything;
I'm always looking for that next bit of knowledge."
What Hilary Hahn Plays
Since 1993, Hilary Hahn
has played a copy of Paganini's "Cannon" Guarneri violin
made in 1864 by Jean Baptiste Vuillaume in Paris. She owns several
bows, including "an unidentified bow that has French and German
characteristics" and a contemporary one made by Isaac Salchow
(New York). For strings, she uses Thomastik Dominant G, Silver D,
and Dominant A, and a Pirastro Gold Label Steel E.
