Tag Archives: Hilary Hahn

Hilary Hahn and J.S. Bach

Hilary Hahn’s solo recital on March 12 was truly great. The word astonishing fits except that it is not a surprise when Ms Hahn performs in a way that combines flawless technique with emotion, color, and devotion to the music. While hearing her play three of Johann Sebastian Bach’s works for solo violin, I knew that this was pure Bach. There is no ego or personal style filtering the music. The music did not need such additions; it was exciting, an on-the-edge-of- the-seat experience. It was pure music.

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

The program offered Sonata No. 1 in G minor, BWV 1001; Partita No. 1 in B minor, BWV, 1002; and, after intermission, Partita No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1004.

Hilary Hahn, Violinist

Purity does not mean that it was simple. Every note, every multiple note created a world of sound. Sound is a real, physical thing. It can change the world around it. Sound can move mountains; consider an avalanche.

The Sonata No. 1 in G minor is listed first of Bach’s six works for solo violin. Its parts are Adagio, Fuga: Allegro, Siciliano, Presto. The order of Slow, Fast, Slow, Fast is intentional. It balances classical order with the interweaving of free imagination and openmindedness. There is a mathematical intelligence at play. My college roommate, Leah Johnson Wilcox, was a math major. I knew she knew games of balance and dimensions and that I would never be able to play on that field. Ms Hahn’s superb intelligence is a wonderful match with Bach’s. Together, they explore balance, space, rhythms; they play with time and space. The listener is joyfully immersed in the mathematics of music without really knowing it is happening.

The Partitas have movements named for dances. The Siciliano in Sonata No. 1 is the only dance character in the Sonatas. Baroque dances were crazy complicated in their patterning of order. Partita No. 1 in B minor opens with an Allemande, and then its Double; next comes a Courante and its Double: Presto; Sarabande, and its Double; Tempo di Borea (Bourree) – and its Double. The Double is an ancestor of a jazz variation; it spins out something new from a standard. Here, the music takes off from the musical idea of the dance movement first presented. The rhythms and characters of the dances go beyond a restatement of a physical, 18thc. dance. The music tells us the DNA of a Courante’s running motion or the Sarabande’s dignity and sadness. It is not only the heart of the music in motion; it exposes Bach’s understanding of the electrical pulses and chemical interactions that keep it alive.

Restraint can be beautiful. Order can breathe. These violin solo works are not embroidered or showing off innovation. They combine profound creativity with their classic forms.

There were moments in the recital when I am certain I heard Bach speak. Did Bach invent music? I know that is not true, not entirely true. It only seems that way sometimes. There are not adequate ways to describe Ms Hahn’s greatness. Standing alone on an empty stage, she filled the stage and Davies Hall with her presence and her powerful connection to the music she made.

The Partita No. 2 in G minor shares its format with Partita No. 1 but its Fate led it somewhere else. This one has no Doubles, but it does have five movements: Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, Gigue, and Chaconne. The mood of the first four movements is tinged with reflection, controlled order; if we were to use Romantic thoughts we might find regret. The Gigue (Jig) takes rhythm over the mountain, dancing with wild energy which takes the rhythmic demands farther than one could expect, and even farther than that. And then, there is the Chaconne. It is very long, so long as the all the first four movements together. It gives us a theme and then sixty-four variations. I do not remember breathing as I heard this majestic music. It gathers the knowledge of music’s world and, in the last two strokes of the bow, made my heart stop in awe.

For more about Ms Hahn, please see the article at http://www.livelyfoundation.org/wordpress/?p=1359   about her Davies Hall recital on April 26, 2016, with Cory Smythe, pianist. The program included work by Mozart, Bach, Aaron Copland, and Tina Davidson’s Blue Curve of the Earth, the winner of a competition for new encore pieces sponsored by Ms Hahn.

 

HILARY HAHN at SAN FRANCISCO’S DAVIES SYMPHONY HALL

HilaryHahn Hilary Hahn, acclaimed violinist, performed solo violin and sonatas with pianist Cory Smythe, Tuesday, April 26, at the SF Symphony’s Davies Hall. The performance was brilliant. Although the Hedgehogs knew about Ms Hahn, seeing and hearing her live is something altogether different and surely placed multiple exclamation marks after comments about her artistry. Ms Hahn has a calm, assured stage presence. Her mastery is so great that the music of the masters she performs can fill the hall without distraction. Her program opened with Sonata in G major, K.379(373a) by Mozart and Sonata no. 3 in C major for Solo Violin, BWV 1005, by J.S. Bach. It would be more than enough to be able to be back in Davies and hear either one all over again. After the intermission, she performed Selections from Six Partitas for Solo Violin by Anton Garcia Abril, commissioned by Ms Hahn; Sonata for Violin and Piano by Aaron Copland; and Blue Curve of the Earth, by Tina Davidson. Ms Hahn created a competition for new encore pieces. Ms Davidson’s Blue Curve...was the winner.

mozart-kraft-1819-150x150The Mozart Sonata offered gentle, mellow music which was still Mozartian in delight and invention. It opens with an Adagio, a bit of a departure from the Adagio usually coming later in a Sonata, and then picks up with an Allegro of perfect balance. It was a chance to experience the partnership of piano and violin in fiery passages. The second movement, Theme and Variations, presents five variations which suggest that if he had wanted to take the time, Mozart could have written five hundred, each different, fascinating, and surprising as these.

bach-haussmann-1748 The Bach Sonata is unaccompanied. It was part of a group of sonatas and partitas written between 1717 and 1723, the era in which he also wrote the Brandenburg Concertos, and solo works for keyboard, violin, and ‘cello. Ms Hahn’s performance was a rich, deep experience. The listener could experience the breadth of emotion created through pure music. It was a powerful performance of music which sounds new nearly three hundred years after it was written. One may perceive in it the connection between mind and the earth. Bach knew this profundity and gave it to the world in the abstract reality of his music.

Aaron-Copland For a musical excursion into the 20th century, Ms Hahn’s choice of Copland’s Sonata for Violin and Piano was wonderful. It had everything one looks for in the great works of this American composer whose life, 1900-1990, just about spanned the century. He is the composer whose music encompassed the heights of classical tradition as well as jazz inspired rhythms and themes that mislead you into thinking they are folk tunes. He does it all in this Sonata. The music never sounds like it was assembled like a salad. He carried all the music within him, assimilated into the great art that Ms Hahn and Mr. Smythe brought to life: vivid, dancing, almost sacred. Ms Hahn’s performance was a sensational evening of great music performed with greatness.