Classical violinist Hilary Hahn is taking a serious creative risk this month, having teamed with experimental Icelandic soundscapist Hauschka for their new album Silfra, due out May, 23rd. It won't quite make her a lost persona of Lady Gaga, (she's not out dry humping a motorcycle), but as one of the two or three most visible performers in classical music over the last decade and a half, to abandon recording the classical back catalog in favor of locking yourself in a creative cell block with an avowed single-name Icelandic weirdo (see also Jonsi and Bjork) for a space of weeks and emerge with a largely improvised batch of abstract musical sketches and vignettes signals a significant and possibly risky shift.
Hahn landed on the scene in 1998 as a precocious teenager with her ebullient, maniacally forceful, and precise recording of Bach's Partitas for Solo Violin. She has since embodied an almost Prussian work ethic that Bach would likely have recognized and approved. She tours endlessly and has released almost one album per year for the length of her career thus far. At first she seemed happy rounding the bases of violin's established canon, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Barber, Stravinsky and still more Bach. In 2003 though, she signed with Deutsch Grammophon, away from her previous home at Sony and started looking around the library of great music for more idiosyncratic challenges. Paganini, Sphor, Schoenberg and most recently American populist of the avant-garde Charles Ives. She has presented herself as a happy promoter of the relevance of great Western music, remaining a favorite collaborator for orchestras around the world and a favorite with audiences.
And even despite her penchant for exploratory collaborations, a brief collaborative tour with singer songwriter Josh Ritter in 2008, for example, it has to come as a surprise to most that her newest release is not just a departure from classical compositions but an improvised set of minimalist spontaneous-music pieces. As a concert violinist she has long years' experience interpreting the muse for others but now for the first time she stands face to face with the Terpsichorean apparition to find from it a wholly original voice.
It's perhaps a sign of my inherent optimism that I am terrified of the result. I have the faith requisite to successfully worry, just as a man who believes in God may still fear the devil. Conquest belongs to the bold but so does spectacular failure. And since Ms. Hahn seems a courageous artist with no compunction taking these risks, I will gladly worry on her behalf...I hope it doesn't come off as just a trite, wanky mess. Look forward to a review here on RFF, pending the album's release.
-Preview by YORGOD
Listen to the first release from the upcoming Silfra, entitled "Bounce Bounce," with stop-motion visuals by animator Hayley Morris:
