Johann Sebastian Bach
     Works for Solo Violin

* Partita #3 in E, BWV1006
* Partita #2 in d, BWV1004
* Sonata #3 in C, BWV1005

Hilary Hahn (violin)
Sony SK 62793 Total time: 78:44

Summary for the Busy Executive: Un-freakin'-believable.

I first heard Hilary Hahn live, in a performance with the Cleveland
Orchestra of the Mozart third violin concerto.  As a rule, I'm not a huge
fan of the Mozart violin concerti, and I've always preferred the "Turkish"
fifth.  However, Hahn and the Cleveland made a believer of me.  Hahn
invested her line with the subtlety of a great singer, and the orchestra
followed her with the sensitivity of a Gerald Moore.  It was one of the
finest Mozart performances I've ever heard.  Forget Mozart, it was one of
the finest performances I've ever heard.  Intermission, and I rushed to the
lobby, to buy two CDs from the violinist herself (she signed them).  So now
you know me for the gushing fan I've tried to hide from you.

Right now, Hilary Hahn is as good or better than violinists two and
three times her age, both as a violinist and as a musician.  My only doubt
attaches to her range.  I've not heard her in the big Romantic works.
Although I note a Brahms concerto recording, everything I've listened to
has been small-scale -- Mozart, Beethoven, Barber, Bernstein, and Bach.
Within that, however, she is right now a master, and the thought that she
will probably improve unnerves me a little.

All her virtues spring to light from the first notes on this disc:
intonation not only dead-on, but actively contributing to the beauty and
excitement of the music; double-stops as if they're no big deal; a gorgeous
singing tone.  In addition to the technique, she is - no other word for it
- musical, in a fundamental way that goes beyond intellect and analysis.
Maybe someone did teach her this, but it sounds absolutely spontaneous,
as if she decides at the last possible instant where the music goes next,
while at the same time, holding in her head the larger vision of a
movement's architecture.

For some reason, however, the recording has stirred up controversy.
People tend to love it or hate it.  Put me down in the former camp.
Furthermore, people seem to hate it for contradictory reasons.  Some blame
her for taking an excessively Romantic approach, while others find it cold
and "technical." "Excess" and "aloofness" seem to me to cancel each other
out.  I have little idea why people consider her performance a Romantic
one, other than the fact that she uses a modern instrument in a modern way,
rather than a period instrument with appropriately period bowing and tone.
To me, the furor over modern-vs.-HIP means ultimately very little, since
it's largely a fight about means rather than about results.  I don't find
her excessive or even deeply dramatic in her reading.  It's basically
youthful ardor and dancing, with a natural elegance some people mistakenly
equate with frigidity.  It's the same category of error as the disapproval
some people feel toward the widow who doesn't weep copiously and wail
during the funeral - a rather suburban, unimaginative prejudice.

The solo violin works alternate partitas and sonatas.  Partitas are simply
suites of dances, although we shall quickly see that Bach's dances aren't
meant for court or rustic dancers.  The sonatas take the form of sonata
di chiesa (church sonatas), old-fashioned by the time Bach got around to
writing them - old-fashioned even in Vivaldi's day.  The latter are in four
movements, the second a fugue - in the order slow, fast, slow, fast.  The
slow movements tend to serve as elaborate introductions to the fast ones.

The program opens with the third partita and an impetuous, sweeping
"Preludio," a movement Bach liked so much, he arranged it at least twice,
for both the Christmas Oratorio and another cantata.  Hahn takes your
breath away.  One of the main tensions of the set lies in the contradiction
between the violin (primarily a melody instrument) and Bach's contrapuntal
style.  Bach provides a catalogue of tricks - some he gets from the Italian
composer-violinists he studied, like Vivaldi and Corelli, some he invents
- in order to simulate several simultaneous voices from an instrument
essentially single-tracked and linear.  It seems to me one of the
performer's jobs to fool the ear.  Hahn provides this in fairly pure form
in the second-movement "Loure." She not only gets the momentary "chord"
of her double-stops, but the melodic lines the sequence of double-stops
provides.  In the following "Gavotte en Rondeau," Bach also carries out the
illusion by wide range separation of the (mainly) two lines of music, and
here Hahn keeps the lines apart mainly through differing dynamics, rather
than succumb to the spurious ease of playing everything as one melody.

Bach, of course, left very few indications or interpretive marks as to
how his music should go.  This consequently furnishes a lot of room to
performers.  Nevertheless, I find two general schools.  First, what I
might call the "Saint Sebastian School" raises Bach to the status of
deity and tends to treat everything he wrote as Profound with a capital P.
How can a god write anything less? I'm not saying that there are no great
performances which take this approach (Milstein and Szeryng come quickly
to mind), but the failures really jar as pretentious and, worse, dull.
The second - what I think of as the "Italian School" - is much lighter,
closer to the dances which are not quite dances and not quite monuments
either.  This approach generally fails in the longer movements, where the
music just tends to go by and evaporate.  I tend to like Bach more among
the Italianate practitioners.  For me, the saints and angels dance and go
about eternal life pretty much like they went through their mortal one.
The difference is they can bear "the unbearable lightness of being."
Perhaps for this reason as well, I regard a Bauhaus cathedral more
authentically celestial than a Baroque or Rococo one.  At any rate, Hahn
sings and dances as if they were the most natural things in the world,
or out of it.

The second partita, however, is her least successful account.  She
begins beautifully in the "Allemande" but quickly loses the separation
of voices, choosing instead a smooth, single line.  She doesn't lose
it entirely, but enough to jeopardize the overall architecture of the
movement.  There simply isn't enough chiaroscuro.  She recovers in the
"Courante," and moreover manages to tie it to the "Allemande." The
third-movement "Sarabande" counts as one of the best of the set - heartfelt
singing without over-inflation; she even manages one or two allusions to
the "Chaconne" finale (also a sarabande) - while the following "Gigue"
conveys strength, joy, and flexibility.

Violinists have so often performed the "Ciaccona" as an encore or as
a stand-alone recital piece that they often forget how to attach it to
the rest of the Partita.  We have remarked on Hahn's adumbrations of this
movement in an earlier one, but one senses a disconnect between the end of
the "Gigue" and the beginning of the "Ciaccona." The finale challenges not
only the fingers, but the brain.  How does one shape this massive chunk?
Most performances clock in anywhere from fourteen to fifteen minutes.  Hahn
takes close to eighteen, not bad in itself, but it would seem to require
a greater grasp of the piece as a whole than she gives.  This is a
fragmentary reading.  The fragments are beautiful, but they only
intermittently cohere into larger structures.  Often, this is a matter
of sticking too long with one dynamic or changing the dynamic at a
structurally awkward point.  Furthermore, the crescendos and decrescendos
need to be better managed.  She sometimes runs out of room on the
crescendos and doesn't find enough opportunity to decrescendo.  At one
point, she slows down the tempo as slow as I've ever heard it without the
music becoming pokey.  Indeed, from this stems the longer performing time.
Some listeners have taken exception.  I think it a great idea, since it
provides architectural contrast.  The problem is that Hahn needs a clearer
view of the complete structure she's trying to build - and it is *her* job,
not Bach's.  I can't judge the success of the tempo change, because her
structure still seems unclear.  With interpretive freedom comes
interpretive responsibility.  She recorded this six years ago, still in
her teens.  I'd like to hear her play it now.

The opening "Adagio" of the sonata exhibits the virtues of crescendo and
decrescendo the "Chaconne" lacks.  The shape of phrases and how they fit
together stand out in high relief.  Again, the tempo runs a bit to the slow
side, but, again, Hahn brings off the tempo she sets.  The transition to
the fugue is beautifully done.  So Hahn can do these things, but she needs
to remind herself to do them.  The fugue itself stands as another highlight
of the set.  Only slightly shorter than the "Chaconne," it makes the same
demands of the player - demands which Hahn this time meets in spades,
preparing for and fashioning one powerful climax after another, all in
the service of elucidating the architecture of the whole.  The following
"Largo" runs longer than most, but I'd not have it a moment less: limpidly
beautiful and, yes, a bit Romantic, like a Mendelssohn andante.  The
allegro finale burns down the barn, without sacrificing musicality or a
sharply-defined independence of voices.

All in all, an impressive half.  I hope she gets to record the other three
and to redo the second partita.  At any rate, I'm a believer (and I didn't
even have to see her face).

Steve Schwartz