Hilary Hahn Plays Bach to a Packed Disney Hall
/By Truman C. Wang
3/16/2023
Photo credit: hilary hahn
Hilary Hahn gave a violin recital in Walt Disney Concert Hall yesterday, and the place was packed. Unusual among classical musicians, she has a massive, almost cult-like following on social media – Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Youtube – and her concerts arouse the sort of frenzied mass demonstrations usually reserved for pop stars. One can forgive the applauding in between movements frowned upon by the old fogeys.
But last night’s all-Bach recital was outwardly a sober, cerebral affair. There were just three works on the program: Sonata No. 1 and Partita Nos 1 and 2 – all in the somber minor key, to boot. In the Sonata, the polyphonic fuga dance was perfectly and excitedly voiced. In the Partitas, the various Baroque dances swirled and glided down the bar lines with infectious zeal, pausing only at the pensive Sarabandes to reflect and smell the fragrant roses. Most memorably, in the mighty Chaconne, Ms. Hahn played across a very wide dynamic terrain in the most thorny passages of multiple stoppings without ever becoming clangorous – the tone always pure and lovely, the technique effortless and unshowy, concealing her great art laying within.
Ms. Hahn gave only one encore – “Preludio” from Partita No. 3 – and it was delectable. Her 1865 Vuillaume violin sounded better than many a Stradivarius that I have heard in this hall, proving that it is the player, not the instrument, that makes the music sing.
Get ready for more Hilary-mania in October when she returns to play the Sibelius concerto.
Truman C. Wang is Editor-in-Chief of Classical Voice, whose articles have appeared in the Pasadena Star-News, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, other Southern California publications, as well as the Hawaiian Chinese Daily. He studied Integrative Biology and Music at U.C. Berkeley.