Hilary Hahn
I love performing. The sounds coming at me are dynamic, colorful and multi-layered. The energy from the musicians around me and from the audience is a swirl of excitement. Sometimes, I can feel the stage vibrating under my feet.
You don't need to be a performer in order to dive into the sensory experience of music. Simply get as close as you can to the source of the music.
That word 'prodigy' has such a derogatory implication. It is used to describe people who are forced to play a lot of concerts very early, people whose audience comes because of their youth, people who are exploited. None of the above really applied to me.
I grew up not watching TV and I enjoy TV but it kind of takes my brain away from me.
I like to take walks and getting out and seeing things. These experiences are so irreplaceable and give you a whole different perspective on the greater context that you're in. If I didn't try to take advantage of that, I'd be missing out on a lot of really interesting things.
I enjoy reading and thinking, and it's hard to make that space as an artist.
My teacher was still practicing Bach until his death at 89. I have no doubt that if I live that long, I'll be doing the same thing.
I go a lot to Korea and Japan.
I've been to New Zealand several times.
Growing up as a classical musician, you're taught a lot about outreach and about how people aren't being taught music in school. But you don't have to study music to like it. And a lot of the music that people like - be it jazz or rock or opera - is stuff they haven't studied.
As more people get into indie bands and alternative music, they're also getting more into other genres that fit those categories, like jazz and classical. It's becoming more rebellious to go to a classical concert. You're getting the younger art house crowd and regular students as well as those who are just curious.
I've always heard the same doomsday concerns and yet, every day, there are people going to a classical concert for the first time - whether it's on a date or being dragged there by their grandmother.
Taking on music that's not played very much is a contribution I can give. There's so much I feel that needs more attention.
Whenever I work with people who are nonclassical artists, I kind of get a kick in the pants. I think, 'How can I apply what I do to their music?'
I'm more creative the more rules I have - note values, tempos, dynamic markings. Somehow, I find that really inspiring.
In the performance sense, I find that interpretation is improvisatory in nature. You can go anywhere with an interpretation on any given day.
When I started my recording career, I hoped that someday the Grammy committee would notice something.
With a Grammy, if you're releasing your record with a major label, you have a chance with any record. You also have a very long shot with every record.
One challenge, if you do a website, a Youtube channel, Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Ping, other things like that, is you don't have time to be an artist. As a performer, you need to practice.
Deutsche Grammophon really has a grasp of the classical repertoire.
I grew up in Baltimore.
When you have a teacher who is part of a tradition, the other people in that tradition are such stars. You just look at them like pop stars.
Edgar Meyer's violin concerto was the first piece of contemporary music I worked on in any depth. I was 18 or 19.
It's no good to do a piece once and then move on because it doesn't have time to develop. I try to play seven or eight concerti in a season, and generally one or two of those are new for me.
The nice thing about the violin repertoire is that it's small enough that you can plan on learning everything at some point - whereas the piano repertoire is so enormous it wouldn't be possible unless you're a learning machine.
My career direction has probably been guided as much by curiosity and my personality as by my early influences.
I have a lot of interests. I daydreamed about various career options growing up; the one I'm in is the first one that worked out, and I love it, so I feel very lucky.
As a professional, you pick up ideas from your colleagues and the orchestras you work with, while coming up with mutual interpretations in very short periods of time.
I try to do a lot of direct contact with the audience, because the audience is part of the concert, too, as much as anyone on stage, and it's a shame not to get to meet them if you get the chance.
One of the most rewarding things is meeting someone after a concert who has never been to a concert before. It is incredibly rewarding when they say, 'This is my first classical concert.' It is really exciting for everyone.
I have always enjoyed literature classes, and I took a fiction workshop for writing and analyzing at Curtis... I don't know if would do it professionally, but it's nice to have the balance with the music.
Musicians are also interpretive artists and we are just as creative as painters and writers. We interpret in a way that expresses ourselves.
I am not trying to be cooler or change my image or get into pop music.
If you start censoring what you're interested in for the audience, you don't give the audience enough credit.
The audience will find the artist who matches their interests. If you're not being true to yourself, your audience can't find you, because there's a wall up between who you are and who they're seeing.
I don't think there's such a difference between older and newer music as there is between one composer and another.
Sometimes, I'm not sure why I wind up doing some of the things I do.
You couldn't be performing if it weren't for the audience. I appreciate them being there. So why not applaud them? They took time out of their schedule to show up and sit in the concert hall and be part of the experience.
It's fine with me if people want to applaud between movements of a concerto. It doesn't bother me - it's part of performance experience.
I always feel I have a long way to go in my playing and my music.
The violin didn't keep me from doing things I wanted to do.
Sometimes if the point of a piece of music is to open a conversation with other people, it's really hard to open that conversation if you're telling people exactly what to do or feel or think.
Writing is a good creative outlet... it's a supplement to my music.
Music can inspire immediate emotional reactions, even if the only person who hears it is the person creating it.
Sometimes I like practicing, sometimes I don't. But I like the result... I hardly ever get discouraged. Maybe right when it's very hard to get something done correctly, but then the idea flashes through of how to fix it. And I get encouraged. And other ideas flow.
Always ask questions.
I like when things happen very quickly, just flash in and flash out. It keeps things interesting.
Phrasing is the idea of finding sentences and using punctuation in speech. I often look at the score to see what's written in by the composer to see if I can find clues to those directions, like what direction did the composer have in mind, and I try to incorporate those things as much as possible.
What I do is creative. It doesn't seem like that when I'm playing a piece that was written in the past, but the score is just the outline and everything in it is relative. The key is to make this piece written by someone else belong to you and then connect to the audience.
Of course everyone has those moments of frustration now and then, when you say, 'I wish I could play well already - or just stop.' But it's too much trouble to stop just for a moment of frustration. It is when you keep going that you make the most progress.