This recording was nominated for the 2000 Grammy Award for "Best Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance (with Orchestra)."
This disc was Gramophone magazine's "Recording of the Month" for March 1999.
The Beethoven concerto has been recorded by every major violinist, sometimes in several versions. Much like the teen age Anne-Sophie Mutter, who recorded the concerto with her mentor, Herbert von Karajan, Hilary Hahn is partnered by her artistic mentor, David Zinman. Like Mutter, she brings the freshness of youth (along with impeccable technical skills) to this famous music at considerably brisker tempos. Also like Mutter, Hahn plays the Kreisler cadenzas.
This coupling would have greatly pleased Leonard Bernstein who yearned, above all else, to be remembered as a great composer comparable to Beethoven and his beloved Mahler. Hilary Hahn and David Zinman give a persuasive performance of Bernstein's 'Serenade after Plato,' one that is more successful at integrating the elements of jazz into the fabric of the music than the composer's own recording with Gidon Kremer (if perhaps without the last bit of glamour the Latvian brings to everything he plays). The Americans swing and in this music there is no substitute for a native accent.
