Introduction:

Hilary Hahn is an acclaimed American violinist who was born in 1979, she started studying the instrument at the age of 4 and after studying at the renowned Curtis Institute of Music she started her phenomenal career which has taken her around the world working with a raft of world class orchestras and performing in all the top concert halls. She has won a Grammy for her recordings of the violin concerti of Brahms and Stravinsky, along with a host of other awards during her highly productive recording activities. After an initial contract with Sony Classical she is currently contracted to Deutsche Grammophon and her recent unusual album combination of the Schoenberg and Sibelius Violin concerti was the first recording of a piece by gritty 20th century composer Schoenberg to ever hit the top of the classical charts - quite an achievement.

Basically the form of the documentary covers a concentrated period of Hilary Hahn's touring life.
We start with her about to go onstage at Berlin's famous Philharmonie Hall with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin to perform the Korngold violin concerto conducted by Kent Nagano, there's a taste of that kind of frisson before a performance but straightaway the main issues with the DVD for a potential buyer become obvious. Looking at the DVD one can see that one of the main extras is a complete performance of the Korngold, so why on earth do we find that during the documentary itself - the Korngold also appears almost in its entirety? OK, the 3 movements are separated with documentary coverage of Hilary Hahn, but in total we hear about 16 minutes of the 26 minute long concerto... that's 16 minutes of totally duplicated material! I could understand if perhaps only a couple of minutes of each movement appeared in the documentary, but so much - no, I'm sorry, this is a big issue I feel for any potential buyer.

Another segment with Kent Nagano discussing Hahn's performance of the Korngold is so peculiar I just have to pick up on it - he is filmed with the orchestral porters tidying up the Berlin stage behind him, with all the clatter and banging around this involves. Couldn't the producers have found a quieter corner to film? One gets a really rather haphazard impression of their production skills.

Perhaps the only interesting comment in this section is when the former head of the school Gary Graffmann talks of her audition and says how it was obvious right from the first notes that Hilary Hahn was a major talent. I feel it would have been much more enlightening for the DVD to take a look further back into Hilary's relationship with the violin: Did she choose to start learning it at age 4? Did she come from a musical family? Did she always want to be a musician etc?

This was a situation where the power of a really fine young musician to appeal to a non-classical audience could be shown in action and the atmosphere has to be ruined by the DVD production. I have to say this was certainly VERY frustrating to the viewer, especially as her performance sounded an original and highly appealing one. If only the repetition of the Korngold had been vastly reduced, we could have heard the whole of the Bach in this unique and challenging venue.

Between these too long extracts from the Korngold, there is footage from Hilary Hahn's visits to the Abbey Road Studios in London to record with the London Symphony Orchestra and conductor Sir Colin Davis, and then a short segment when she performs Paganini's 1st violin concerto in Hong Kong. It is at this point that Hilary seems to become more at ease with the filming and we learn of her approach to recording and practising on the road. It is really an indication of how interesting this documentary COULD have been. Ironically, the most revealing conversation with her in the entire DVD is right at the end when she is packing up after her performance in Berlin, suddenly for the first time, one can see a young woman in her twenties who does actually have a life, interests and opinions outside of music...

This DVD was a big disappointment to me in the sense that I was looking forward to getting a better insight into one of the finest young female violinists playing on the international circuit today, but that simply didn't materialise. Yes, there is some great playing on this DVD, in particular the Korngold, and also most tantalizingly the spoken over extract from Bach's Chaconne, but it doesn't make up for the frustrating aspects of the DVD as I've discussed in this review. The so called interviews are a total laugh; they aren't interviews at all, just a few short uninteresting sentences if even that. Having the music spoken over is another big negative point in terms of buyer choice and the totally unnecessary duplication of much of the Korngold is a huge marketing mistake which certainly reduces the appeal of this DVD. On a positive note I do have to say that the sound quality which includes Dolby Digital and "dts Digital Surround Sound" is excellent and can't be faulted.