Although she's only 20, Hilary Hahn has already had phenomenal success as a concert artist. The young violinist has performed with many of the great orchestras in the United States and Europe, and in December she debuted with the Berlin Philharmonic under Mariss Janssons.
Next weekend, local audiences will get a chance to hear Hahn play the Brahms Violin Concerto with the Utah Symphony and music director Keith Lockhart.
Hahn's appearance in Abravanel Hall on Friday and Saturday is just one more stop in a monthlong concert tour that has taken her to Stockholm, Helsinki and Munich. And, in fact, when she recently spoke with the Deseret News by phone from her home in Philadelphia, she had just returned from an engagement with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under conductor Kurt Masur.
This year, Hahn will be doing some 100 concerts, and it will also mark her busiest year to date, but she takes it all in stride.
"I'm pretty continually on tour," she admits, "and when you tour, especially in Europe, you get used to being on the road."
To keep things interesting while she's touring, Hahn has given herself the assignment of posting notes on her Web site www.sonyclassical.com from each city. They're kind of like electronic postcards from around the world.
"It's called 'Hilary's Journal,' " she explained. "You just need to click on my name, or type it in the artist box to access it. What I do with the journal is, I write about what I've been doing in each city, and I also take 20 to 25 digital pictures, which you can see on my Web site, too. I started this last January, and so far I've got 60 entries."
Hahn's successful career as a concert artist has been carefully planned and executed. She didn't just leap out into the world as a child prodigy, although she easily could have done that. Instead, Hahn enrolled at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia at age 10. And even though she finished the school's academic requirements by the time she was 16, she opted to stay on for another three years to study further with Felix Galimir and Gary Graffman and be coached by Jaime Laredo. Hahn graduated from Curtis at 19 with a bachelor of music degree.
"I didn't just jump into it at an early age," she explains. "I was told it would be better for me to wait until I was ready to perform, and until I was 16 I had a full schedule as a student, so I didn't do much concertizing then. But after that, I added on more and more concerts, and this year I'm going to be doing 80 to 100 concerts."
Hahn is the first professional musician in her family, although her parents and grandparents are musical and either play instruments or have sung in choirs. "I was always exposed to classical music," she says. But she took up the violin almost by chance.
"I was almost 4 when I started in the Suzuki program," Hahn said. "My dad and I were taking a walk one day and we saw a sign that said, 'Violin lessons for 4-year-olds.' We had never seen that sign before, so I just stumbled into (playing violin), and I'm glad that I did."
Hahn has a fairly extensive repertoire of both concertos and chamber music that stretches from Bach to Bernstein. And only last year, she commissioned a new concerto by Edgar Meyer, which she recorded with Hugh Wolf and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra in September.
"This is the first time I commissioned a piece," Hahn said, "and it's the first piece that Meyer didn't write for himself. The concerto is lyrical, but it has its own characteristics. Meyer has a lot of influences. He played (string bass) for 10 years in the National Symphony, and he plays bluegrass and jazz, and he's been to India as part of a State Department-sponsored tour. All this has influenced him. And also, you can hear little bits of Mozart, Bach, Shostakovich and Stravinsky in the concerto.
"You'll like it when you hear it."
The Meyer concerto is paired up with the Barber Violin Concerto on Hahn's most recent CD, which will soon be released. Other albums she's recorded so far have included works such as the Beethoven Violin Concerto and the solo sonatas and partitas of J.S. Bach.
After each concert this week, Hahn will be in the lobby in Abravanel Hall to sign copies of her CDs and meet the audience. "I feel that it's important to meet the people," she says, "since they're part of the concert, too."
The concerts take place March 17 and 18 at 8 p.m. in Abravanel Hall. Also on the program will be Samuel Jones' "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" and Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 in A major.
Ticket prices range from $14 to $37 and can be purchased by calling ArtTix at 801-355-ARTS or 1-888-451-ARTS, or at the ArtTix outlets in Abravanel Hall or the Capitol Theatre. Tickets can also be purchased online at www.tickets.com.
Utah Symphony subscribers and anyone interested in group discounts should call 801-533-NOTE.