Hilary Hahn playing her Bach encore (screen shot from yesterday’s live-stream)
Last night the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO) concluded its concert season with a YouTube live-stream of the performance led by Jader Bignamini. The concert soloist was violinist Hilary Hahn in a performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 219 (fifth) violin concerto, known as the “Turkish.” This was the entirety of the first half of the program; and the intermission was followed by Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Opus 27, his second symphony, composed in the key of E minor. As might be expected, Hahn followed her concerto performance with an encore, the solo Sarabande movement from Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 1004 partita for solo violin in D minor.
That performance was definitely the high point of the evening. Hahn’s command of Mozart’s rhetoric could not have been better, and I would not be surprised to learn that her cadenza for the second movement of the concerto was her own. Her command of unaccompanied Bach was just as engaging. All this made for a listening experience to be remembered, in contrast to the lumbering qualities of Rachmaninoff’s symphony, which is best forgotten, even if it is the most performed of his three symphonies!
As a result, the Detroit season did not conclude on the best of notes (so to speak); hopefully, the fall season will return to live-streaming with a more engaging offering.
