Schoenberg Violin Concerto Op.36 Sibelius Violin Concerto Op.47

Product Description Hilary Hahn is an American Grammy Award winning violinist. This album features the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen. Violin Concerto, Op.36 Composed by Arnold Schoenberg and Violin Concerto in D minor, Op.47 Composed by Jean Sibelius. She has an online journal of her life as a working classical violinist busy on the concert road. As Hilary puts it 'a nomadic musician - a modern troubadour'. Amazon.com Few would argue that Schönberg's Violin Concerto makes for easy listening. Its angular expressions, weird, heavenly decoration and the long solos that seem designed to maim the violinist can be, simply, too much. Hilary Hahn, on this new CD, plays the work as if it were an outgrowth of Romanticism (which it is), rather than the start of a musical revolution (which it also was) and the result is lyrical, songlike, and, well, Romantic. Yes, the 12-tone thorniness is clear, but each melody makes sense not only within itself, but throughout the whole concerto. If the first movement puzzles, the Andante sounds practically like a Viennese Waltz and the finale is not only like a feat by a virtuoso, but a culmination. This is the most approachable performance of this work available. The Sibelius concerto gets a fine if unusual reading. Hahn plays it with a Nordic coolness; the first movement's long melodies have less passion than the listener will be accustomed to and even the finale, normally played with somewhat of a bellicose nature, comes off without much heat. But it certainly cannot be faulted as sheer gorgeous playing and neither can Esa-Pekka Salonen's accompaniments. -- Robert Levine