SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Other Links

Editorial Board

Google Site Search

Ysaÿe, Ives, and Brahms: Hilary Hahn, violin; Valentina Lisitsa, piano; Benaroya Hall, Seattle  11.2.2009 (BJ)


Hilary Hahn is a violinist capable of great things. I termed her recording of the Elgar Violin Concerto “absolutely stunning” when I reviewed it four years ago in Fanfare Magazine. I have yet, on the other hand, to be equally convinced by her in live performance, and the first half of this recital seemed to me very far from being one of those great things.

Believing that a critic must take the rough with the smooth, paying for all the joy the profession affords by sitting stoically through the occasional sub-par performance, I very rarely vote with my feet. But the first half of this program was so depressing that I really couldn’t face any more of the same, and left at intermission. That it would indeed have been largely the same may be inferred from the design of the program: Ysaÿe, Ives, and a little minor Brahms in the first half, Ysaÿe, Ives, and a little minor Bartók in the second.

By the program itself, let me say, I was delighted–the juxtaposition of unaccompanied works by the Belgian virtuoso with sonatas by the American musical backwoodsman made an intriguing prospect. Yet, in the event, Ysaÿe’s Sonata No. 4 was played listlessly (and with occasional lapses of intonation), and the Ives Fourth and Second Sonatas were dispatched without a trace of the humor that makes the composer’s music so likeable even at its most maladroit moments.

To play Ives without humor is an achievement of sorts. There was a lack of charm, a coldness even, in Ms. Hahn’s playing that I have not found in her recordings, where her probing musical intelligence can make its effect, freed from the need to connect with an audience of actual living, breathing human beings. The absence of such a connection was underlined by the way she accepted her ovations and then walked off stage with hardly any acknowledgment of her excellent partner Valentina Lisitsa’s contribution.

Those ovations, I am bound to report, were indeed enthusiastic. Why, you may wonder, did the predominant response of a pleasingly full house differ so markedly from mine? Are all these people really better listeners than I? Or could it be that Ms. Hahn’s youth and prettiness are difficult qualities for many concert-goers to see or hear around? I offer no answer to those questions. But you’ll know what I think.

Bernard Jacobson


^{Back to Top                                                    Cumulative Index Page}