Poise and Technique Prove Violinist Hahn at Star Level

There is another Hilary in the land rapidly coming into her own--Hilary Hahn, 20, violinist. In late January she played the Beethoven Violin Concerto with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and back then she was the impressive emerging violinist. Wednesday she returned to the Southland, this time to help out the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra with a concert at UCLA, and she had risen to star attraction. Tickets for a special evening of concertos in Royce Hall went for as much as $100.

Music director Jeffrey Kahane warmed up the large, eager audience with Bach conducted from the piano. But after that the night was all Hahn’s, with Mozart’s Fourth Violin Concerto and the West Coast premiere of a new one by Edgar Meyer, the Nashville bass player who crosses over between classical and country. She was remarkable.

No flashy protegee of teacher Dorothy DeLay at Juilliard (as is the typical Brat Pack fiddler), Hahn is, instead, a product of the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. A poised, noble musician, she easily wins over listeners without gimmickry. Confident musicianship and superb technique are satisfaction enough.

Hahn is an appealingly secure figure on stage (the crowd loved it that she shared her bow-time bouquet with the conductor and concertmaster). Her Mozart was straightforward and flawless, powerfully projected while still graceful. She may not yet have the individual voice to take imaginative liberties with Mozart, but she has the intelligence--and seeming experience--to know how to makes the notes on the page speak directly.

There are still a few traces of girlishness. The journals of her travels that she posts on her Web site are a wide-eyed soaking up of the wide world (and the small one backstage). And there was also a kind of wide-eyed enthusiasm in her own cadenzas to the Mozart concerto. But the main impression was, nevertheless, one of mastery, of Mozart and of her expressive instrument.

Meyer’s Violin Concerto was written for Hahn last year and takes full advantage of her magisterial tone and technique. It is engaging music but short on ideas. In its first movement an insinuating tune is taken apart, literally fiddled with, and returned with less the feeling of transformation or journey than of fixing something broken. In the second movement, serene syrupy music wears thin but then kicks up its heels with a suggestion of bluegrass. The promise of progression, however, is unfulfilled with the return of the slow and again the fast. Hahn writes in the notes of her new recording of the concerto of having pages faxed to her by the composer one at a time. And, in fact, that is how it sounds, somewhat like a harried politician on the stump telling people over and over what they want to hear today.

Still, Hahn’s eagerness, at a young age, to be part of American music is noteworthy. The Meyer concerto shares her CD with Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto. Last year she included Leonard Bernstein’s Serenade on a disc with the Beethoven concerto. She would make a fine player for the violin music of Charles Ives, Elliott Carter, John Adams, Morton Feldman and Philip Glass.

She is also a fine listener. Hahn and Kahane are spirited collaborators. The Mozart was played as stylish chamber music. The Meyer benefited from energy (Kahane programmed Meyer’s Double Concerto for cello and bass last year). The opening Bach D-Minor concerto was full of life as well, although here Kahane’s animated solo piano playing, liquid in the Royce acoustic, seemed to swim among the strings rather leap free of them.