Three years old, walking with her father, and there it was: MUSIC LESSONS FOR FOUR-YEAR-OLDS.

"A book wrapped in paper with a ruler sticking out of it. I would hold that under my chin. It looked sort of like a violin, I guess." Thirteen years later, Hilary Hahn held instead an 1864 Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume "Del Gesu," and held, too, the concertgoing world in awe. A critic for Suddeutscher Zeitung judged forthrightly: hers is among "those rare talents which one encounters once in a century." At 17, she recorded Hilary Hahn Plays Bach. In composing these partitas and sonatas at 35, Bach's soul seems to have been borne by a theophany exceeding his years. Hilary, at half that age, seemed to have entered that borne-away soul almost three centuries later. Two orchestral albums have followed, and now, just 21, she's taking on Brahms and Stravinsky.

Great music, like great poetry, leads ultimately to the silence beyond the last sigh of all the beauty and power the soul can attain: the sigh of stilling wisdom, the genuflection to a further beauty and a further power that can be felt but not made. I recall Hilary ending a Mozart concerto one night with just such a sigh of her violin.

Hilary writes poetry, shares it with no one. I'm delighted when she, who seems to be of such delicacy, tells me she's a devotee of Muddy Waters. "I love 'Mannish Boy,'" she proclaims of one of the master's most badass fulminations.

She and her magic Vuillaume of spruce and maple have barely begun to conjure. Me, I'm waiting for Hilary Hahn Plays Muddy.