Watch Hilary Hahn play Mozart in a hula hoop

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.