hilary hahn..violinist

I was impressed by all the praise, so I bought her SACD (which won a prize) of the Brahms concerto. The way this multichannel disc was mastered is so terrible that I am not sure that I can give a fair evaluation. (She is recorded equally in Left and Right Channels, as if the recording were stereo, and is missing from the center). I bought another Hahn SACD, the Bach double concertos, and this one is mastered better. However the playing also let me down a bit. I have these Bach concertos on a CD that I keep in my car which I copied, and I don't even know who is playing, but I like it better.

She is obviously good, but her playing just does not impact me the way some other performers do. For comparison, I dredged up an old Decca CD of the Tchaikovsky concerto played by a young (in 1982) Korean woman, Kyung Wha Chung, and to my ear she is/was superior. Tops in my opinion was David Oistrach, particularly for the Tchaikovsky. My old Angel LP is just about worn out. Itzhak Perlman, before his fame and fortune set in, was great.

But she is young. We will see where she goes.

Back on 2/13 I suggested that David Oistrach is my ideal for the Tschaikowsky, and noted that my old Angel LP is about worn out. Following up on this, I looked for a replacement on CD, and found one on Amazon…A Deutsche Grammophon reissue two CD set of Bach Brahms and Tschaikowsky. The Brahms and Tschaikowsky recordings date from 1954, and are mono. Excellent mono. But the Tschaikowsky is such an unbelievable performance, better than the later Angel LP, that I thought I should pass along a recommendation for this CD. I don’t want to sound sexist, but Oistrach could play with all the sensitivity of the best woman violinists, but no woman, and few if any men, could play with the power and endurance he displayed.

Gregm...Get the 1954 recording I suggested. The mono is no problem at all because the music is so much a soloist's piece, and the quality of the sound is superb. (This from a multichannel advocate). Somehow they managed to lose all the noise as well.

I have a recording from the time period you mention, an Angel stereo LP, superb, but the earlier performance is better (IMHO).

In addition to the Brahms and Tschaikowsky, the Bach is interesting if only because David's son, Igor, joins him for the double concerto.