This was the album Hilary Hahn almost never made. When, four years ago, the American violinist decided to take a sabbatical, her plan was a return to concerts featuring the three works recorded here. As it was, the pandemic cancelled almost all of them, leaving her in desperation practising two of them – the Sarasate and the Ginastera – on her own in complete isolation. She nearly cancelled, fearing that she wasn’t ready to play them live, let alone put them down on disc. Well, she needn’t have worried. 

Hilary Hahn Eclipse

These are superb accounts of three hugely contrasting works. The title, “Eclipse”, refers to the dark days of 2020 and 2021, but what acually links these works is an infectious wildness of spirit. We feel it coursing through Dvořák’s Violin Concerto with its Bohemian folksiness; in Ginastera’s Latin inflections, despite a veil of atonality that comes and goes; and most obviously in Sarasate’s virtuosic fantasy on Bizet’s opera with its ne plus ultra of gipsy heroines. 

It also hits us right between the eyes the minute Hahn puts bow to strings. Her lean, silvery tone roams...