violinist Hilary Hahn took her first lesson at the age of three. Using the Suzuki method until age five, she then undertook violin training with Klara Berkovich in Baltimore for the next five years. Her incredible aptitude was present very early in her training, and by the time she was just 10-years-old, she was enrolled in the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, studying with Jasha Brodsky.
Although Hahn attended public school until she was nine, her academic education in all subjects was conducted at home until she turned 12-years-old. She was further home-schooled in mathematics until age 15. Studying at the Curtis School of Music for nine years offered an intensive music education, and she was able to continue her studies there until she earned her Bachelor’s degree at the early age of 19. Part of that wonderfully swift progress was due to her summer studies taken at the Encore School for Strings in Ohio, and the Marlboro Music Festival and Middlebury College Language Schools in Vermont.
Erich Wolfgang Korngold was born in Brünn, Moravia (today known as Brno, The Czech Republic) on 29 May 1897 as the second son of Dr. Julius Korngold and his wife Josefine. He grew up in Vienna from the age of four, when his father assumed the position of music critic at the Neue Freie Presse (New Free Press) newspaper as successor to the noted reviewer Eduard Hanslick.
Already having played the piano from a very early age, the young prodigy composed his first original works in 1905 at the age of eight. Demonstrating a phenomenal musical precocity towards music, Korngold was taken by his father in 1906 to meet and play for Gustav Mahler. Proclaiming the child a genius, Mahler encouraged the elder Korngold to engage the renowned composer Alexander von Zemlinsky as the boy’s mentor. Though there were lessons with Robert Fuchs and Hermann Grädener among others, for all intents and purposes Zemlinsky would be Korngold’s only teacher, and for only a short time at that.
Here is Hilary Hahn to perform the Korngold Concerto for you:
