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‘What would people do with new encores?

I’m curious…’ Martin Cullingford speaks to violinist Hilary Hahn about her project to commission 27 encores from the same number of composers, breathing new life into a much-misunderstood genre

‘A

n encore is, for me, a sound world – a full piece in about three or four minutes that leaves the audience with a distinct impression, but doesn’t erase the impression of everything they’d experienced right before. That’s a tricky thing.’

new album, issued by Deutsche Grammophon, reveals, they did exactly that. Influences range from Indian classical music to bluegrass, the tone from reflective to hyper-virtuoso. As Hahn herself puts it, ‘This genre has so much room for creativity – it’s remarkable.’

And yet, far from feeling like a disparate collection of miniatures, something seems to unite them all. And when you

In disarmingly simple terms, Hilary Hahn – violinist, and now the commissioner of a double album of contemporary encores – distils the challenge succinctly. On paper, the parameters she set the composers seem fairly basic: under five minutes, and for violin and piano.

look into it, that something feels like nothing more nor less than the nurturing enthusiasm for the whole project of Hahn herself. I doubt the humble encore has ever had such a committed advocate.

‘People have assumptions about what an encore is – usually that it’s flashy. But I don’t think it has to be that way at all ’

But think of the most powerful short stories you’ve read: the impact of a carefully crafted vignette can be every bit as visceral, powerful and profound as the longest novel because of the very economy of words. Or, of course, more entertaining. Because that’s what we usually think of when we think of an encore, isn’t it? The pizzazz, the virtuoso showpieces, when the cares of a carefully curated programme have been cast aside and everyone can let their hair down. That’s an encore, isn’t it?

‘It’s a loaded word,’ says Hahn. ‘People have assumptions about what an encore is – usually that it’s flashy, and a treat at the end of programme. But I don’t think it has to be that way at all. Some of the composers asked me, “Do you want a fast one, do you want a slow one?” I said, “I play fast and slow encores, you write what you want to write!”’ And, as listening to Hahn’s

While the project itself began to form 10 years ago, its origins might be traced back further still to when the young Virginiaborn Hilary was taking her early steps along a path to becoming one of today’s acclaimed soloists. ‘I grew up with these old recordings of Kreisler, Heifetz, Milstein, Elman, Grumiaux – and between the Bach sonatas and partitas, the Sibelius and Tchaikovsky concertos, the Mozart sonatas and all of that, there were just these beautiful short pieces. And I think my first feeling of connecting with those short pieces was through listening to them on those recordings and then learning how to play them. I remember rehearsing Ave Maria when I was very little, I remember Air on the G String – these are the ones I remember, the slow ones.’

gramophone.co.uk

GRAMOPHONE MARCH 2014 11