Thursday, April 21, 2016

A lot riding on Hilary Hahn’s bow at Strathmore

The almost long-lived bequest could seed from its enterprise to committee new euphony for major artists. In Bilfield’s notification, she has been request performers to pertain her with projects they would really wish to do. The fruits of such a conversation were on show Tuesday, with Hahn premiering the outset 3 of six alone partitas for alone fiddle, which WPA licensed from Spanish composer Antón García Abril at Hahn’s bespeak. This menu blanche places big confidence in the personal predilection of performers.

In Hahn’s pillowcase, the new deeds from García Abril are an plain reflexion of her aesthetic personality: grievous, powerful, virtuosic but not pretentious, wondering but not radical. Hahn has aforesaid her ambitiousness is nix less than to pee-pee a durable donation to the unaccompanied fiddle lit, in the custom of Bach’s six Sonatas and Partitas. Fiddler Hilary Hahn’s recitation Tuesday nighttime at Strathmore was not scarce a concert. It was a examination of the guidance and leading of one of the first humanities organizations in the nation’s great.


Why such high-pitched stake? Since winning burster of Washington Playing Humanities in 2013, Chairperson Jennet Bilfield has sought-after to shake what she sees as the moss-grown, traditional example of presenting classical. The formation has progressively focussed on contemporaneous deeds, crosswalk artists and unlawful formats.


If, on the base of the outset tercet partitas, García Abril’s pieces shouldn’t be spoken of in the like breather as Bach’s lofty, multi-movement masterworks, they are notwithstanding an dear and essential assay to grappler with a melodic job: how to indite polyphony for unaccompanied fiddle that can get pastime and base on its own without escort. The results, piece not peculiarly pathbreaking, were oftentimes outstanding and beautiful. (Hahn volition premier the finis tercet partitas in October.) García Abril, 82, is fertile but piddling known out-of-door Spain, his ferment kickoff climax to Hahn’s tending done an unasked holograph. He cites Debussy, Tangle, Bartok and Messiaen as pet composers, and the tonic colours and sonorities of his partitas were grounded in their bequest, specially Messiaen. Apiece partita is aforesaid to meditate an prospect of Hahn’s personality (and fits her proficiency similar a mitt), though their titles look based more on orthographic than melodious considerations (the offset missive of apiece deed spells “H-I-L-A-R-Y”).


The offset partita, coroneted “Heart,” is the virtually ambitious—a 15-minute assay at a large-scale motion cognate to Bach’s Chaconne from Partita No. 2 in D Shaver. Orifice with dense, reflective chords, the euphony is darkened by vague harmonies and filled with hungriness. A quicker heart part introduces ungratified passagework then gives way to a decision that attempts to synthesise all this cloth, with prominent textural and musical contrasts, ahead attenuation into malarkey.


The reading reached a highschool gunpoint with the stark, acute lulu of Copland’s slack motility, but the commonly inspiration last emerged moderately unaired, contempt attempts to shoot a petty intimation and spell. The reading, which drew a goodly but not capacitance crew, was an other but by no substance critical tryout of Washington Acting Arts’ new centering. Commission new workings is an inherently haphazard enterprisingness, and every reality premier testament be hazardous. The firearm gestures toward a boldface striking arc, though around passages appear to thread instead than modernise in fullness. The Bartokian sec partita, “Immensity” (vii proceedings), drew the virtually enthusiastic reply from the consultation, with an resistless sensation of rhythmical ride and vigor.


Hahn dug into the rapid-fire runs and vigorous cross-accents with her brand aggressiveness, all the piece revelation shards of line that momently peeked out from the polyphony. “Love,” the nine-minute tertiary partita, is the slenderest study, with a whispered, puzzling lyricality punctuated by surges of emotion. End-to-end, Hahn proven a hard counselor-at-law for the composer, with her racy quality, unobjectionable joint and extremely communicatory wording. The evening’s feel of earnestness seemed to bent concluded the otc deeds on the syllabus: an unsmiling, fixed rendition of Mozart’s Fiddle Sonata in G, K. 379, and a reasonably disdainful recitation of Aaron Copland’s Fiddle Sonata (both attended by pianist Cory Smythe).


But on the fundament of one nighttime, thither is crusade for optimism that the meter and resources existence lavished on this enterprise are not existence misspent.

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