Watch Hilary Hahn play Mozart in a hula hoop

Watch Hilary Hahn play Mozart in a hula hoop

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norman lebrecht

December 18, 2018

She takes the challenge at 3:00.

And… spoiler… she has practised it somewhere before.

OK, Anne-Sophie, ball’s in your court.

Comments

    • Dennis says:

      I saw that years ago. The part starting at 3:40 where she says, “This is contemporary music,” (complete with ringing telephone noise) is hilarious.

  • DAVID says:

    This video only confirms Hilary Hahn’s remarkable sense of balance and mastery of the many “forces” implicated in playing the violin. Everything bodily-wise in her playing is in perfect balance; there is no more energy expended than is needed and no unnecessary tension, unless it be musically warranted. There is also an uncanny ability to adapt to bodily changes, well demonstrated by how she does not seem undeterred in the least by the hula hoop, even during the awaited variation in tenths in the video. That’s also the reason why she can play the Schoenberg concerto, among others, with such a stunning sense of ease and naturalness — I’m always awed by the way she delivers the cadenza in the 1st movement, delving through what are essentially unplayable passages without a shred of hesitation, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. That makes her quite unique among today’s violinists: very, very few people are blessed with such a sense of perfect balance, which was probably fostered by very good teachers but which, I suspect, is also due to Ms. Hahn’s extraordinary intuitiveness as to how playing the violin, for lack of a better word, actually “works” — not just an intellectual intuitiveness, but more importantly a bodily one.

  • Rgiarola says:

    Paganini instead of Mozart, no?

  • M2N2K says:

    She certainly is a good sport and her technical mastery of the instrument is unquestionable. Unfortunately it does not make her interpretations in much of violin repertoire any more interesting or compelling.

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