Hilary Hahn Releases Second Solo Bach Album On Decca

Triple Grammy Award winner Hilary Hahn returns to solo Bach twenty years after her debut recording. This recording of Sonatas 1 & 2 and Partita 1, her debut on the Decca label, completes Hilary’s solo Bach recordings and was released in Australia earlier this month.

The disc contains the Violin Sonata No 1 in G minor, BWV 1001, the Partita No 1 in B minor, BWV 1002 and the Violin Sonata No 2 in A minor, BWV 1003.

Hahn’s Plays Bach  was released on the Sony label in 1997, she surprised commentators by choosing solo Bach for her debut album; she then amazed her listeners with her elegant but outstanding execution of this music’s technical and interpretive challenges at such a young age.

She was just 17 at that time. Now 38, she completes her recording of the Bach sonatas and partitas for solo violin in this new album. Hahn’s relationship with Bach goes back to her earliest studies of the violin, which included practicing or performing one movement of the sonatas or partitas every day. She continues to work on solo Bach nearly every day, also programming a sonata or partita in many recitals, offering movements as encores after concertos, and presenting Bach in her spontaneous “mini concerts” for babies and their parents, knitting circles, and yoga studios. Most of all, she continues to love the music and to turn to it as a source of both reflection and challenge.

Hahn has released twelve albums on the Deutsche Grammophon label and five on Sony, in addition to three DVDs, an Oscar-nominated movie soundtrack, an award-winning recording for children, and various compilations. This will be her first album on Decca. Her first Grammy came in 2003 for her Brahms and Stravinsky concerto album, followed by a Grammy for her pairing of the Schoenberg and Sibelius concerti, which spent 23 weeks on the charts. In 2010 Jennifer Higdon’s Violin Concerto, which was written for Hahn and which she recorded with Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, went on to win the Pulitzer Prize. Her most recent Grammy came for In 27 Pieces: The Hilary Hahn Encores, a multiple-year commissioning project to create a new body of violin encores.

This album supports Hahn’s international Bach solo recital tour in 2018-2019 of European, North American, Canadian, South East Asian and UK cities.