Concert violinists aren't typically the adventurous sort. As virtuosic as folks like Joshua Bell, Gil Shaham, and Sarah Chang are, their concert repertoire rarely moves beyond the chestnut staples of Brahms, Sibelius, and Tchiakovsky. This is also true of their near-obligatory encores, which have themselves been mired in a closed circle of showpieces by Bach, Paganini, Kreisler, and one or two others for decades.
Enter Hilary Hahn, who over the past decade has charted her own unique path, playing both timeless classics and contemporary works to packed concert halls around the world. Frustrated by the dearth of short, contemporary works for the violin, Hahn commissioned 27 composers to write new encores for her, which she has performed over the past several seasons. Those encores have now been released by Deutsche Gramophon in a double-CD set, with Hahn joined by pianist Cory Smythe.
To celebrate the occasion, Hahn held a day-long album-release party a week ago Sunday at the Greenwich House Music School, during which she and Smythe played all 27 encores in the school's second-floor concert hall. (Apparently Hahn has a thing for unusual album-release parties, such as her 2008 event at East Village club DROM.) The music encompassed a wide range of styles, from spiky modernism (Paul Moravec, Richard Barrett) to quiet tonality (David Lang, David Del Tredici), all tossed off by Hahn with astonishing precision and power.
Many of the composers were present, including Nico Muhly (taking a break between Two Boys rehearsals), Jennifer Higdon (whose Hahn-commissioned Violin Concerto won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize), and Jeff Myers, whose The Angry Birds of Kauai won an open-submission contest receiving more than 400 entries.
Simultaneously, there were additional groups—including JACK Quartet, TILT Brass, and Elliott Sharp—performing other works by the commissioned composers in tiny classrooms throughout the building. I won't soon forget the experience of hearing Face the Music's Pannonia Quartet—all middle schoolers—play Nico's Diacritical Marks while he sat listening on the floor. The composers also held casual Q&A sessions relating their various experiences with Hahn's commissions: Christos Hatzis said he checked the area code when she called to make sure it wasn't a prank call, while Higdon said that Hahn asked her to make Echo Dash "more challenging."
At the end of each of the two three-hour sessions, Hahn and Smythe signed CDs, which was pretty much the only traditional aspect of this highly ambitious and thoroughly enjoyable day. If only more musicians, classical or otherwise, threw this kind of inventiveness into their album-release parties, the music industry might actually find a way out of the death spiral in which they're currently trapped.
More pics on the photo page.