University of Florida Performing Arts

Get a glimpse of the behind-the-scenes life of Hilary Hahn.  To read Hilary’s on-line journal, click here. 

To read Hilary Hahn’s blog in Program Notes, the blog of the National Performing Arts Convention, click here.

To see a video clip of Hilary Hahn performing, click here.

Program
Violin Sonata No. 4 in E Minor, Op. 27 – Ysaÿe
Violin Sonata No. 4 (Children’s Day at the Camp Meeting) - Ives
Hungarian Dance No. 10 (Presto) – Brahms
Hungarian Dance No. 11 (Poco andante) – Brahms
Hungarian Dance No. 12 (Presto) – Brahms
Hungarian Dance No. 19 (Allegretto) – Brahms
Hungarian Dance No. 5 (Allegro) – Brahms
Hungarian Dance No. 20 (Poco allegretto) – Brahms
Hungarian Dance No. 21 (Vivace) – Brahms
Violin Sonata No. 2 - Ives
Violin Sonata No. 6, in A Minor, Op. 27 – Ysaÿe
Reve d’Enfant, Op. 14 – Ysaÿe
Violin Sonata No. 1 - Ives
Romanian Folk Dances – Bartók

*The Brahms pieces were arranged by Joseph Joachim.

About Hilary Hahn
Grammy Award-winning violinist Hilary Hahn is one of the most compelling artists on the international concert circuit.  Renowned for her intellectual and emotional maturity, she was named “America’s Best” young classical musician by TIME magazine in 2001, and appears on a regular basis with the world’s great orchestras in Europe, Asia, and North America.

Highlights of Ms. Hahn’s 2006-07 season included recital tours in the United States and Europe,  and appearances with many major orchestras around the world, including the Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Orchestra of St. Luke’s (at Carnegie Hall), Houston Symphony, Dallas Symphony, Tonhalle Orchester, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan, Hong Kong Philharmonic, and KBS Symphony Orchestra of Korea.  During a busy 2005-2006 season, she played recitals in cities including New York (Carnegie Hall), Salt Lake City, Boulder, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Warsaw, Brussels, Paris, Berlin, Munich, Vienna, Seoul, and Tokyo; and appeared with numerous orchestras including the Boston Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Montreal Symphony and Philadelphia Orchestra.

Hilary Hahn records exclusively for Deutsche Grammophon.  Her most recent album, released in October 2006, is an unusual pairing of Paganini’s Concerto No. 1 and Spohr’s Concerto No. 8, with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Eiji Oue.  In 2005, Deutsche Grammophon released her recording of four Mozart sonatas played with her longtime recital partner Natalie Zhu.  Her first two albums on the label were the Elgar Violin Concerto and Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending, with the London Symphony Orchestra and Sir Colin Davis, which won the “Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik”; and four violin concertos by Bach with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and Jeffrey Kahane.  Prior to signing with Deutsche Grammophon, Ms. Hahn made five recordings for Sony Classical.  Her first album, featuring Solo Sonatas and Partitas of J.S. Bach, won Diapason’s 1997 “d’Or of the Year” and spent weeks as a bestseller on the Billboard classical charts.  Her next recording, concertos by Beethoven and Bernstein, brought her first Grammy nomination, as well as a second Diapason “d’Or,” the Echo Klassik award for 1999, and Gramophone Magazine’s “CD of the Month”; and her third release - American concertos by Samuel Barber and Edgar Meyer - won the Deutsche Schallplattenpreis and the Cannes Classical Award.  Her 2001 recording of the concertos of Brahms and Stravinsky won her a Grammy Award in addition to Gramophone’s “Editor’s Choice” and Monde de la Musique’s “Choc.”  It also became Ms. Hahn’s fourth consecutive classical bestseller.  In the autumn of 2002, Sony released her fifth album: concertos by Felix Mendelssohn and Dmitri Shostakovich.  She has collaborated on several albums with non-classical musicians, appearing on Worlds Apart by Austin alt-rockers …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead and on Tom Brosseau’s album, Grand Forks.  She can be heard as featured soloist on the Oscar-nominated soundtrack to M. Night Shyamalan’s film The Village.

Admitted to Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music in 1990 at the age of 10, Hilary Hahn made her major orchestra debut a year-and-a-half later with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.  In March 1995, at age 15, Ms. Hahn made her German debut playing the Beethoven concerto with Lorin Maazel and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, in a concert broadcast on radio and television throughout Europe.  Two months later she received the Avery Fisher Career Grant.  In 1996, Ms. Hahn signed an exclusive recording contract with Sony Classical, and made her Carnegie Hall debut in New York as soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Alongside her solo work, Ms. Hahn has long been interested in chamber music.  Nearly every summer since 1992, she has appeared at the Skaneateles Chamber Music Festival, performing both as chamber musician and as soloist with the festival orchestra.  Between 1995 and 2000, she spent four summers studying and performing chamber music at the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont.  From 1996 to 1998 she was an artist-member of the chamber music mentoring program of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, with whom she subsequently appeared as a frequent guest artist.

Hilary Hahn was born in Lexington, Virginia.  At the age of three she moved to Baltimore, where she began playing the violin one month before her fourth birthday in a local children’s program.  From age five to 10, she studied in Baltimore with Klara Berkovich, a native of Odessa who taught for 25 years at the Leningrad School for the Musically Gifted.  From 10 to 17 she studied at Curtis with the legendary Jascha Brodsky - the last surviving student of the great Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe - working closely with him until his death at the age of 89.  Though she completed the Curtis Institute’s university requirements at age 16, Ms. Hahn deferred graduation and remained at the school for several more years, taking additional elective courses in languages and literature, coaching regularly with Jaime Laredo, and studying chamber music with Felix Galimir and Gary Graffman.  In May of 1999, at the age of 19, Ms. Hahn graduated from Curtis with a bachelor of music degree.

About Valentina Lisitsa
The incomparable talents of pianist Valentina Lisitsa have been recognized in glowing reviews as a “gigantic talent” and as “the kind of talent that comes along once in a generation.” A performance of Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto at the Grant Park Festival in Chicago was described by the Chicago Sun-Times as “jaw-dropping.”

Ms. Lisitsa is capturing the attention of audiences throughout the world for her stunning virtuosity and unequaled sense of lyricism. Widely known and respected as a duo-pianist alongside her husband Alexei Kuznetsoff, she brings to the concert stage a rare technical mastery combined with deep understanding of musical inner life.

Born in Kiev, Ms. Lisitsa presented her first solo recital at the age of six. A graduate of the famed Kiev Conservatory, she has won numerous international prizes, such as the Murray Dranoff Two Piano Competition, Concertino Prague, The Lysenko Piano Competition, The Paris Chamber Music Competition, and the Ukrainian Chamber Music Competition. Since making her New York debut in 1995 at the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center with Gerard Schwartz conducting, she has maintained an active international schedule in recital and with orchestras, including a US tour with the Orchestre National de France under Charles Dutoit, performing the Poulenc Concerto for Two Pianos with her husband in, among other places, New York and Boston.  She has also performed in a 30-performance tour with the Prague Chamber Orchestra.

Ms. Lisitsa is a frequent guest artist of numerous orchestras and festivals including the Indianapolis Symphony and Chicago’s Grant Park Festival where she has appeared seven years in a row performing concerti by Mozart, Rachmaninoff, MacDowell, Bernstein, and Beethoven.

Her career highlights include her performances of all the Rachmaninoff concerti with numerous U.S. and European orchestras, a 29-city recital tour (solo and duo with her husband, Alexei Kuznetsoff) in the U.S., a performance of Rachmaninoff’s Second Concerto with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra with Andrew Litton conducting, and the world premiere of Schubert-Liszt’s Schwanengesang at the Los Angeles County Museum of the Art, which was broadcasted live.

Her international appearances include recitals in the Seoul Arts Center in South Korea and concerts in Russia, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Germany. Since her debut at the prestigious Concert Society Series in Milan, Ms. Lisitsa has been re-engaged seven times for recitals and orchestral performances. The most respectable Italian newspaper, Corriere Della Sera, says, “…A singular mixing of grace and mysterious power…”   Ms. Lisitsa’s most recent performance of Shostakovich’s Concerto No. 1 with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra in Munich and the I PALPITI Chamber Orchestra in Los Angeles was said to be “…as Shostakovich himself played it…” (Los Angeles Times).

Her recent engagements have included, a tour with the Talich String Quartet, a month-long tour with the Russian Symphony Orchestra in the United States and Mexico, recitals and an orchestra tour in Italy, a 12-concert U.S. tour with the Russian State Symphony Orchestra, a European tour with the Stuttgart Symphony Orchestra and solo and chamber music recitals in Milan, Vienna, Amsterdam, London, Glasgow, San Diego, Miami, New York, and Chicago.  Highlights from past seasons include the Atlanta Symphony, Stuttgart Philharmoniker, with the NYPO Chamber Players and Lynn Harrell, concerts in Knoxville, Las Vegas, Miami, Pensacola, and at the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. In the 2004-2005 season, Ms. Lisitsa’s engagements included performances in New Zealand, Mexico and throughout the United States. Ms. Lisitsa’s busy 2005-2006 schedule included performances with the Nashville Symphony, Syracuse Symphony, Chicago Philharmonic, West Virginia Symphony, and Orquestra de Sao Paulo.  Her summer 2006 schedule included her debut at the Bard Music Festival, as well as appearances at the Grant Park Music Festival, Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival, and with the Orquestra Sinfónica de Mineria in Mexico.

Ms. Lisitsa’s recent 2006-2007 season engagements included orchestral appearances with the Pacific Symphony, Oregon Symphony, and Black Hills Symphony Orchestras. Ms. Lisitsa also toured the U.S. in recital. In the 2007-2008 season, Ms. Lisitsa joined Hilary Hahn in extensive tours throughout the U.S. and Europe.

Ms. Lisitsa can be heard on the Audiofon label. Her discography consists of seven highly acclaimed CD recordings including performances of Shostakovich’s First Piano Concerto with the Ekaterinburg Symphony Orchestra, Sarah Caldwell conducting; two CDs of duo piano performances; the Rachmaninoff Cello Sonata with William De Rosa, and three solo recital programs ranging from Mozart to Prokofiev. In addition to her extensive discography, Ms. Lisitsa has also recorded a television program Valentina in Miami, a one-hour music special produced and presented by PBS. A DVD of Ms. Lisitsa’s interpretation of all 24 Chopin Etudes is also available. Recently, Ms. Lisitsa was featured in a segment of the CBS News program Sunday Morning.