A violinist of Hilary Hahn’s popularity and acclaim could easily be resting on her laurels—content with a very well-remunerated career playing Mendelssohn in Muncie and Sibelius in South Bend, never venturing further afield than, say, an album of Gershwin transcriptions. She didn’t have to team up with avant-garde German musician Volker Bertelmann, aka Hauschka, who conjures haunting, spacious, sometimes quirky soundscapes mixing electronica with all sorts of inside-the-piano experimenting. (Sometimes bouncing a ping-pong ball on the strings is just the creepy touch a piece needs.) And she certainly didn’t need to fly to Iceland and make a totally improvised CD with him (Silfra, just out on Deutsche Grammophon). Here just last October with an unconventional recital program that offered a generous handful of commissioned works, Hahn returns—not to the Benny, but to the Neptune—for a concert of more improv with Hauschka, solidifying her status as the classical superstar friendliest to the odd and unusual. GAVIN BORCHERT

Tue., May 29, 8 p.m., 2012