Hilary Hahn

I've continued to pursue other interests in my downtime, but I'm glad I'm a musician. It's the perfect career for me.

Kids would come up to me after concerts and give me drawings they've made of violins or, you know, landscapes with a violin floating in it or some sketch of a concert or a portrait of me.

If you think about it - if you watch a gymnast compete, you don't see their training behind the scenes. You just see the competition. You see the final result when it's polished. And that is very much what people experience with concerts. They go to the concert. And they see the final version.

There's nothing I really wanted to record more than Bach. It's wonderful music. It's - on a grand scale, there's a lot to it. There are - I can work on it for a long time and keep discovering more things, you know, that surprise me every time.

Always ask questions.

I think the things that I learned that stick with me are things you often repeat, even today, which is never stop learning.

I think when a teacher says that you're ready for something, it means you're ready to learn it. It doesn't always mean that you are completely capable of doing everything that's inside the piece.

Something new has the chance to speak to someone immediately. There isn't this expectation of what they're about to hear, so people can be really captivated, really quickly.

By the time I was 12, I was starting my high school stuff in home schooling.

I grew up without TV, I grew up listening to radio, I grew up reading.

It's really been enlightening for me to work with composers because I used to think that everything in the music was exactly what the composer meant. Well, it's what the composer meant in that moment when they wrote it.

Phrasing is the idea of finding sentences and using punctuation in speech. I often look at the score to see what's written in by the composer to see if I can find clues to those directions, like what direction did the composer have in mind, and I try to incorporate those things as much as possible.

I wound up sticking with violin because it was the strongest current in my life.

I was a student that responded well to knowing what to work on.

As a young performer, what you need to be doing is building your technique and musicality, not promoting your abilities - unless you're ready to take on all that will result from such an approach.

Through the Internet and technology, anyone can now seek out any artist, composer or undefined niche of music they find interesting. All on their own, without even having to stand up or go anywhere.

The encore should wrap up the audience's experience of the piece you just played.

Sometimes if the point of a piece of music is to open a conversation with other people, it's really hard to open that conversation if you're telling people exactly what to do or feel or think.

Everyone is always making transitions in life.

I never felt like a prodigy. For one thing, the root of the word is rather monstrous, literally. I never really felt like a monster or anything abnormal, because I always had a lot of different interests. But kids tend to focus on one thing, and for me it was violin.

I remember when I gave my first recital. I thought, 'Oh, my goodness, people are coming to hear me.' I didn't expect anyone to come, and then the whole hall filled up. Of course, it wasn't a big hall, and some of the people were my friends and family.

I find that Bach is appealing to a lot of different audiences. It really hits people at their core in different ways, but it also creates a meditative space. I just feel like I can play it, and it reaches people.

It's easy to be a prodigy. It's really hard to keep pushing in new directions.

When I was starting out with record companies, there was a tendency to simplify the image as a prodigy. I have more than one adjective, and I've always tried to be myself and listen to my instincts.

In music you can find your own niche. You can do what you want to do. There is really no job description. You have to find your own way, and that's fun.

You never know what you're going to learn from which pieces and which composers and colleagues are going to influence that thing you think you know.

If my career doesn't work out as a violinist, I want to become an archaeologist. I've read about paleontology, too - that's dinosaur bones - but I thought it would be more interesting to do archaeology.

Sometimes I like practicing, sometimes I don't. But I like the result... I hardly ever get discouraged. Maybe right when it's very hard to get something done correctly, but then the idea flashes through of how to fix it. And I get encouraged. And other ideas flow.

Sometimes a person comes into an audience after a rough day, and they want to hear something they know.

Writing is a good creative outlet... it's a supplement to my music.

I learn a lot in interviews, I learn about how careers differ.

It struck me that it would be fun to just play stuff with Hauschka. Not even have a project in mind, but just get together and make up some music and see what came out.

There's this feeling of creativity in Iceland.

For me, the conductor is a person who interprets along with me, and we interpret things together.

When I was younger, I felt more like a student working with a mentor when I worked with the conductor, but now it feels more like equals.

I get to work with a lot of great musicians - many I wouldn't have expected to work with - and see how they form their lives around their music and how they approach it.

Touring is a more varied and interesting existence than I would have imagined.

A concert is my experimentation time. I practice playing something several different ways, but in a concert, inevitably I get more ideas onstage, in that combination of focus and adrenaline, than I could ever get in the practice room.

You're not supposed to stop and listen and spy on people practicing. It's supposed to be a private thing. But it's when you come face-to-face with yourself and you look for your flaws and you try to fix them yourself, it's a really intimidating process. It can be very discouraging.

I like to record. It's very intense.

I don't really compare myself to anybody. That would be very unhealthy.

The violin didn't keep me from doing things I wanted to do.

I feel like I had as normal a childhood as anyone, but it had a certain focus. Maybe other kids focused on sports.

Is there such a thing as a normal childhood?

When you have live music in the background, people are usually talking over it. You don't actually get to listen to live music in your space all the time.

I've never loved composing, because I feel like other people do it better.

What I find really interesting is, whenever you see the person who gives you the portrait of yourself, the portrait seems to be a combination of their face and your face.

There's so many different ways to play Mozart.

Obviously, something like ballet, you have music, you dance with the music and it's a very direct connection. With visual art, when there's no music that accompanies the art, such as great masterworks in a museum, you wind up interpreting what the artist is doing, how the artist made that work and what they're conveying.

You don't have any days to spare if you want to improve!