Recognizing Hahn's promise, Sony Classical signed her to an exclusive recording contract in 1996 that made her one of the youngest exclusive artists in the label's century-long history. Hilary Hahn’s latest Sony Classical recording, released in Fall 2002, is a coupling of the Mendelssohn and Shostakovich (No. 1) Violin Concertos with Hugh Wolff and Marek Janowski conducting the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra. It follows the 2001 release of her critically acclaimed recording of the Brahms and Stravinsky Violin Concertos, with Sir Neville Marriner conducting the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, recently named winner of Germany’s Echo Klassik prize.

In September 1999, Hahn gave the world premiere of a new concerto by American composer Edgar Meyer that was commissioned and written for her.

The following week she recorded the Meyer – together with the concerto of Samuel Barber – with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and Hugh Wolff.

Released by Sony Classical in March 2000, the Barber/Meyer disc spent weeks on the Billboard classical charts and brought instant critical acclaim, including the German Music Critics’ Award and a cover story in Gramophone.

The 1998-99 season brought the release of Hilary Hahn's second disc for Sony Classical – a coupling of the Beethoven Violin Concerto and the Bernstein Serenade (SK 60584), recorded in the spring of 1998 with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and conductor David Zinman, produced by Thomas Frost. The disc, recorded when Hahn was 18, brought her first Grammy nomination and has been a critical and popular success: Gramophone named it “CD of the Month,” and Diapason awarded it “d’Or of the Year.” FonoForum in Germany and 24 Hours in Australia published cover stories about Hahn, and the disc appeared as a classical bestseller on the international record charts.

Hilary Hahn’s first recording for Sony Classical, featuring a selection from Bach's solo partitas and sonatas, was released in the autumn of 1997, just as the violinist was making her New York recital debut at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall. In France, the disc won the country's most distinguished recording prize, the 1998 Diapason d'Or for "Young Talent." In America, it was "Pick of the Month" for Stereo Review and appeared for weeks as a bestseller on the Billboard classical charts.

Highlights of Hahn’s 2002-2003 season include performances of the Meyer Violin Concerto in Frankfurt and subsequently in a tour of Germany and central Europe with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. She will play recitals in New York’s Carnegie Hall and in Montreal, Venice, Zurich, Munich, Istanbul, Lyon, Vienna and Dusseldorf, as well as several American cities. Performances of the Bach violin concertos will take her to Lucerne, Vienna and Salzburg, and in the U.S. to Milwaukee, Honolulu, Wilmington and Los Angeles. Hahn’s engagements also include performances of the Elgar Violin Concerto with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and of the Spohr Violin Concerto No. 8 in Lisbon and Copenhagen.

Admitted to Philadelphia's Curtis Institute of Music in 1990 at the age of ten, Hahn made her major orchestral debut with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in December 1991. Her Philadelphia Orchestra debut in 1993 was followed shortly by first appearances with the Cleveland Orchestra, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic. At age 15, Hahn made her German debut in Munich, playing the Beethoven concerto with Lorin Maazel and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in a concert telecast throughout Europe.

Hahn made her Paris debut in January 1998 with the Orchestre Philharmonique and conductor Marek Janowski, which was broadcast live throughout France. In the spring of 1998, she toured with the Bavarian Radio Symphony and Lorin Maazel, making concerto appearances in cities including London, Birmingham, Glasgow, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Zurich and Vienna. In the United States, Hahn gave her New York recital debut at Lincoln Center and returned to Carnegie Hall as soloist with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Hans Vonk. In the 1998-1999 season Hahn appeared with the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the National Symphony Orchestra, among other orchestras across the United States and Europe. She concluded the season with a five-week tour of Australia. She also toured Japan with the Berlin Philharmonic, with conductors Claudio Abbado and Mariss Jansons, performing the Beethoven and Shostakovich No. 1 concertos (the latter televised).

As a recitalist, Hilary Hahn made her debuts at Ravinia's "Rising Stars" series in Chicago and at the Phillips Collection Concert Series in Washington, D.C., in autumn 1994. She has since appeared in recital in Baltimore, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, Washington DC, Tokyo, Amsterdam, Florence, Milan, London, Lyon, Paris, Munich, Zurich, Geneva, Vilnius, and other cities in the US and Europe. She is an avid chamber musician and performs regularly with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and at the Marlboro Festival in Vermont. In October 1997, Hahn also made her recital debuts in Rotterdam, Paris, Hanover and Munich.

A student of Jascha Brodsky, Hilary Hahn began playing the violin a month before her fourth birthday in the Suzuki program of Baltimore's Peabody Conservatory. From the age of five until she entered the Curtis Institute, she studied with Klara Berkovich, a native of Odessa, who taught for twenty-five years in the Leningrad School for the Musically Gifted. From ten to seventeen, she studied at Curtis with the legendary Jascha Brodsky – the last surviving student of the great Belgian violinist Eugene Ysäye – working closely with him until his death at the age of eighty-nine. Hahn remained at Curtis for two additional years, playing regularly for Jaime Laredo and studying chamber music with Felix Galimir and Gary Graffman. In May 1999, at the age of nineteen, she graduated from Curtis with a bachelor of music degree.

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