Gunnar Hahn was born in Stockholm in 1908. At the age of three he began to play magdeburgerspel (a kind of small accordion), and when he started to play the piano at the age of eleven, the latter became his principal instrument. As a pianist Gunnar Hahn made a remarkable début in the Stockholm Concert Hall in 1932, and in the following two decades he made numerous tours.
In the eyes of many people Gunnar Hahn is associated with folk-music. His intereste in folk-music began when he was still a Stockholm schoolboy – he saw folk-dances and heard folk-music at the Skansen open-air museum. All the time he performed classical music he also kept folk-music alive. In 1936 he established his popular fiddlers’ quartet comprising fiddle, clarinet, bassoon and accordion. Gunnar Hahn – who was already a veteran of the airwaves, having made his radio début in 1925 – thought that the accordion was better suited than the piano for radio purposes. The quartet broadcast regularly and gradually grew into a folk-dance orchestra. Over the years Gunnar Hahn made a larger number of radio programmes based on folk-music, including several series as a conductor and arranger of Evert Taube.
In 1949 Gunnar Hahn went to the USA for two months, to introduce Swedish folk-music to the Swedish community. On the west coast a newspaper referred to him as ‘Gun man Harry’!
Much can be told about this ‘grand old man’ of music. He has dedicated his entire life to music – as a performer, composer and arranger. Furthermore, he has taken an active interest in the working life of soloists, for instance in the Swedish Soloists’ Association (Svenska Tonkonstnärsföfbundet), of which he was chairman for three years. He was also one of the founders of the Swedish Concert Institute (Rikskonserter) in 1962, where he worked under his retirement in 1975.