Let me second Jim Tobin on Hilary Hahn.

Karl's remark on Hahn as a "product" snapped my head back.  My
introduction to Hahn was a concert with the Cleveland Orchestra.  She
did the Mozart third -- not one of my favorite violin concertos and
certainly not my favorite Mozart violin concerto.  It was a night of
extraordinary music-making.  She made a believer out of me, and the
orchestra (a "hundred little Szells" that night led by Jahja Ling)
accompanied perfectly, obviously enjoying her work.  Her phrases went
on forever and she pulled off the trick of appearing "just to sing."
Maybe the child Yehudi Menuhin sounded this good in this way.  I bought
two of her CDs right in the orchestra lobby.  Her other CDs, so far from
disappointing me, have shown that her performance that night wasn't a
fluke and that she has a definite "personality" as a player.

But Jim is right.  She seems to gravitate toward the classical and
neoclassical rather than the Romantic, the lyrical rather than the epic.
I don't know how she'd do in the Tchaikovsky, for example.

Steve Schwartz