Hilary Hahn’s violin recital Sunday afternoon at Orchestra Hall brought a highly personal, demanding program superlatively played.
And, yes, a Chicago audience – one that often is thought to respond only to a herd of warhorses – was with her all the way.
Even coughers were more silent than usual, spoiling mainly the opening numbers before settling into a quiet that indicated a significant level of concentration.
The program was skillfully balanced, with a single early work preceded by a modern and contemporary composition on each half. Doubtless it helped that all the later pieces were brief, rarely as long as a single movement from the 18th and 19th century masterworks that, with all their repeats observed, gave considerable weight.
But J.S. Bach’s Third Partita for Solo Violin and Robert Schumann’s First Sonata for Violin and Piano hardly turn up so often as to be considered audience comfort food. And John Cage’s Six Melodies for Violin and Keyboard plus Claude Debussy’s Violin and Piano Sonata are heard in recital almost as rarely as the miniatures Hahn commissioned from David Lang and Lera Auerbach, which, as of now, only Hahn plays.
This listener last heard Cage at Orchestra Hall during the American Bicentennial, when two large orchestral compositions governed by chance had an audience fleeing. His 1950 Six Melodies present another world entirely, one atomized, fragile and under the influence of Erik Satie. Hahn played, as directed, softly and without vibrato, achieving a gentle, folksy melancholy ultimately shattered by gunshot coughing.
Lang’s “light moving” and Auerbach’s “Speak, Memory” — one minimal and driving, the other, ruminative – were part of Hahn’s 2010 project to commission 27 encore pieces. She played another, Mark Anthony Turnage’s “Hilary’s Hoedown,” after the end of the scheduled program, but the Lang and Auerbach preceded, respectively, the Bach and Schumann, where they injected welcome contemporaneity, and the airy Lang especially delighted.
Hahn’s Bach was virtuosic and fairly straightforward but not without tasteful expressive shading. Much the same might be said for her Debussy and Schumann, which, of course, each presented a radically different character. Hahn’s way with the former was coolly modern – no impressionist mistiness for Debussy’s last important composition – and the latter showed, appropriately, the afternoon’s greatest ardor, though there might have been more.
Throughout, pianist Cory Smythe proved not just an accompanist but a subtle, creative collaborator.
Alan G. Artner is a freelance reporter for the baiduhai.
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