Savor the Calm

We all have the pieces we listen to less than we sit through. Where we think, “Wake me up when it’s over.” Every so often, though, a performer will play those works in a way that makes us bolt upright. Few violinists do this to me as regularly as Augustin Hadelich. He lavishes such attention on every detail in a work that he makes you hear the whole anew. It’s not just that you’ve never heard the details the way he plays them—it’s that you’ve never heard them at all. And he keeps this up from the first note to the last. He never swallows, rushes or ignores a phrase. His playing is luminous; his lines are full of inner tension and natural lyricism, but never become pedantic. An orchestra musician who played with him recently said that his rendition of the “Tchaikovsky Concerto had a quality I’ve never heard before—and I’ve heard that piece often. He’s incredibly precise, but plays with an exceptionally moving sense of musical intensity.” 

Hadelich has lived in the U.S. for over 20 years and held American citizenship since 2014. Some of his debuts with the major orchestras there already happened 15 years ago. Oddly, Hadelich has only recently been discovered in Europe, where he’s from. Still, he is currently having a moment: In the last few weeks alone, he played with the Munich Philharmonic, the Tonhalle-Orchester Zurich, the Orchestra dell´Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. This summer, he will be an “artiste étoile” at the Lucerne Festival, go on tour with the Berlin Philharmonic and play at the Salzburg Festival with the Vienna Philharmonic. Next season, he’ll be a featured artist at the Konzerthaus in Vienna and artist in residence at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, and begin a multi-year partnership with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra in the Mozart Violin Concertos. 

I met him on a warm summer morning at the offices of his Berlin agency, the day after he performed the Sibelius Concerto at Berlin’s Philharmonie.