Hilary Hahn has common ground with the violin prodigies Mozart and Henri Vieuxtemps; she first learned these two concertos aged 10. Twenty-five years on, she is a persuasive champion of Vieuxtemps’s Concerto No 4, an ambitious four-movement work written around 1850, when the composer was in St Petersburg as court violinist to the tsar. There are brief moments in the finale where the sweep of a phrase disappears in the punchiness of Hahn’s attack, but overall her flair for tempering soaring passion with intelligent restraint makes the work’s heady romanticism easily digestible. It is coupled with Mozart’s A major concerto, to which Hahn brings a distinctive spark. Her first entry pours balm over the crisply agitated orchestral opening; the slow movement is muscular and lyrical; the finale, in which the pseudo-Turkish episodes are played up exuberantly, has real party spirit. Under Paavo Järvi, the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen is excellent in support.
