Hilary Hahn Records Ginastera’s Violin Concerto
On October 7, 2022, Hilary Hahn released her latest album Eclipse, featuring a stunning performance of Alberto Ginastera’s Violin Concerto.
Hilary Hahn records Alberto Ginastera’s Violin Concerto with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony and Music Director Andrés Orozco-Estrada on her latest album Eclipse. The recording is lauded by Limelight Magazine as “an irresistible and engrossing account of a mesmerizingly original work and worth the price of the album alone.”
Hahn has been performing Ginastera’s concerto internationally in recent years, with performances in the US and Germany. Her performance of the concerto with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony in June 2021 was captured for this new album.
In an exclusive B&H interview with Hahn, the violinist states, “When I first heard the Ginastera Violin Concerto, I was immediately obsessed ... It’s a genius work, the way Ginastera flips the structure on its head: the cadenza at the beginning, followed by a series of different studies, a middle movement featuring soloists within the orchestra.”
> Read “Performer Picks: Hilary Hahn’s Top Boosey Works”
First premiered by violinist Ruggiero Ricci with the New York Philharmonic and Leonard Bernstein in 1963, Ginastera’s violin concerto is famously challenging for both soloist and ensemble, and infrequently performed. Strings Magazine comments: “Hahn’s thrilling performance of this concerto may go some way to changing that.” Hahn has become a passionate advocate for the work, challenging other violinists to take it up and make the piece a part of standard repertory.
On the violinist’s execution of the work’s complexities, The Classic Review writes, “The cadenza (track 4), placed unconventionally at the beginning, showcases a number of techniques: acrobatic double stops, screaming double trills, and pointed pizzicatos, all of which [Hahn] handles with aplomb.”
BBC Music Magazine praised the orchestra’s playing as “stunningly articulate and rhythmically beguiling, while Sound Advocate lauded the 22-soloist second movement as “particularly well-played with a unity of thought and articulation that is hard to find in a quartet let alone spread out over a whole orchestra.”
> Watch the official B&H Score Video of Ginastera's Violin Concerto
> Further information on Work: Violin Concerto
Photo: Courtesy of Deutsche Grammophon