Quotes from Hilary Hahn

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

My career direction has probably been guided as much by curiosity and my personality as by my early influences.

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

In the performance sense, I find that interpretation is improvisatory in nature. You can go anywhere with an interpretation on any given day.

Everyone is always making transitions in life.

I guess I just like the idea of digging things up. Although I used to be scared of human skeletons.

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

There's so many different ways to play Mozart.

I go a lot to Korea and Japan.

That word 'prodigy' has such a derogatory implication. It is used to describe people who are forced to play a lot of concerts very early, people whose audience comes because of their youth, people who are exploited. None of the above really applied to me.

One challenge, if you do a website, a Youtube channel, Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Ping, other things like that, is you don't have time to be an artist. As a performer, you need to practice.

When I started my recording career, I hoped that someday the Grammy committee would notice something.

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.

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.

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.

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

It's no good to do a piece once and then move on because it doesn't have time to develop. I try to play seven or eight concerti in a season, and generally one or two of those are new for me.

It's fine with me if people want to applaud between movements of a concerto. It doesn't bother me - it's part of performance experience.

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.

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.

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

Of course everyone has those moments of frustration now and then, when you say, 'I wish I could play well already - or just stop.' But it's too much trouble to stop just for a moment of frustration. It is when you keep going that you make the most progress.

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.

For vacation, I like going to places I've never been before. I've gone to some remote places, like the Arctic Circle.