In 1995, the 15-year-old Hilary Hahn performed Beethoven’s Violin Concerto with Lorin Maazel and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. The youthful vigor of that exhilarating early efficiency has given strategy to depth and maturity, as exhibited in Hahn’s latest efficiency with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony and conductor Alain Altinoglu, recorded on Might 9, 2025.
4 unassuming timpani beats open the Concerto’s first motion (Allegro ma non troppo), and supply the seed out of which the music develops. Later within the motion, the motif turns into a titanic drive, growling with ferocity. A stressed duality surrounds the principal theme. It turns instantly from sunny main to a shadowy, ominous minor.
The second motion (Larghetto) unfolds as a sequence of variations on a easy but chic melody. A solo violin cadenza kinds the bridge which leads into the ultimate motion, a boisterous and fun-loving Rondo full of the calls of searching horns.
