Hilary Hahn releases new album featuring Jennifer Higdon's Pulitzer Prize-winning Violin Concerto

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Violinist Hilary Hahn will release her latest album, Higdon & Tchaikovsky Violin Concertos, on Deutsche Grammophon on September 21, 2010, demonstrating her commitment to exploring new music while embracing the masterworks of the past. The disc features the world premiere recording of Jennifer Higdon's Pulitzer Prize-winning Violin Concerto, which was written for Hahn. Higdon developed an intimate familiarity with Hahn's impeccable artistry after serving as the virtuoso's twentieth-century music professor at the Curtis Institute. The concerto, hailed by the Baltimore Sun as "tailor-made to the violinist's unflappable technique and musical depth," appears along with Hahn's fresh take on the monumental Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto.

Regarding the combination of two seemingly disparate works on the same disc, Hahn writes, "I believe that these full-scale, grandly conceived concertos...illuminate each other. While they come from different centuries and compositional worlds, they share a great many qualities: lyrical delicacy, a brooding gentility, energetic abandon, and a fine maturity of spirit." This album is not the first time that Hahn has explored the connections between two concertos that come from dramatically different origins; Barber & Meyer Violin Concertos (2000), Paganini & Spohr Concertos (2006), and the Grammy Award-winning Schoenberg & Sibelius Violin Concertos (2008), which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard classical charts and was featured in Time Magazine, have all demonstrated Hahn's brilliant playing and her keen sensitivity to the violin repertoire.

Gramophone magazine’s 2008 Artist of the Year, Hahn is a two-time Grammy Award-winning soloist celebrated for her probing interpretations, technical brilliance, and compelling presence on stage. Thirty years old in November of 2009, Hahn has toured extensively for over a decade, and her acclaimed performances and recordings have made her one of the most sought-after artists on the international concert circuit. Hahn appears regularly with the world’s elite orchestras and on the most prestigious recital series in Europe, Asia, and North and South America. She appeared on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien on January 14, 2010, days before the show was taken off the air. During the 2010-11 season, she tours the U.S. and Canada on a solo recital tour and performs the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto and other works in performances throughout Asia, Europe, and North America.

Comments

Gavin Dixon said…
A curious coupling, but the playing is excellent, especially from the orchestra:
http://www.classical-cd-reviews.com/2011/02/higdon-tchaikovsky-concertos-hilary.html
February 6, 2011 at 4:27 AM
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