‘I’mnot in themood tosmile while I’mplaying;I’m there to transmit

themusic.’Anne-SophieMutter

INTERVIEW

ByHARRIET CUNNINGHAM

T he soloist glides onto thestage like a queen. Her hairis perfect, her make-up isperfect and her figure is

perfectly enclosed in a floor-length,strapless sheath dress of orange silk.She carries her priceless instrumentwith the casual familiarity of a regalorb and sceptre. All that is missing isthe crown.

Anne-Sophie Mutter has beenthe reigning Queen of the Violin for35 years. Ever since her interna-tional debut at the Lucerne Festivalaged just 13, she has been a house-hold name in Germany and aworldwide classical music phe-nomenon. She made her firstrecording for the prestigiousDeutsche Grammophon with theBerlin Philharmonic at 15 and hasbeen with the company ever since.They have just released a limited-edition, 40-CD boxed set of herrecordings titled ASM35.

In spite of her loftystatus, when shetalks on thephone fromher home inBerlin she isat pains tostress howordinary sheis: a singlemum who jugg-les life and workjust like the restof us. Forget theimage of atormented artistspending hours aday devoted to hercraft. She doesn’t evenpractise every day.

‘‘I don’t know if Imust,’’ she says.‘‘Maybe I should. But Idon’t. I can’t. I am a singlemother of two children –although almost grown up– but still my life is sodiverse. I have a foundationin aid of musicians world-wide and my benefit workand so many other things,including what a family needs.

‘‘Even if I would love to, itwould be impossible to prac-tise every day.’’

When I admit that my ownviolin has been crying in thecorner for quite some time shegushes, ‘‘Awww . . . I can play onit when I’m in Sydney! Maybenot for the concert but just tomake it happy. . . ’’

The idea of her playingBeethoven’s Violin Concerto –‘‘the most complex, the mostphilosophical piece of violin

repertoire ever written’’, as shedescribes it – on a dusty studentfiddle, when she has two Stradi-varius violins and a custom-madecontemporary violin by luthier-to-the-stars,Roberto

Regazzi, to choose from, is quaint.But her cute and cosy answers,which reveal next to nothing abouther personal life, speak volumesabout her extraordinary career: thisis someone who has been in thespotlight since she was six.

The Anne-Sophie Mutterstory starts back in Rhein-

felden, at the south-westtip of Germany, where shewas born in 1963. Herparents were journalists,musical but not musi-cally educated. Never-theless, by the age of fiveMutter had already

developed a ‘‘burningwish to play the fiddle’’.

It was soon clear thathers was an extraor-

dinary talent. Shewon the

NationalMusic

Prize at six and was given an exemp-tion from school to concentrate onmusic. By nine she was a full-time stu-dent at the Winterthur Conserva-torium under the tuition of AidaStucki. It was Stucki who introducedMutter to the conductor of the BerlinPhilharmonic, maestro Herbert vonKarajan. Mutter was 13.

Was it terrifying to be standing onthe stage of the Berlin PhilharmonieConcert Hall playing Bach for one ofthe world’s most famous – infamous,indeed – conductors?

‘‘Absolutely! It was so terrifying thatwhen I was invited in 1976 I actuallydidn’t accept his invitation. I went on

vacation first. And I did hope thathis office would forget and not

re-invite me.’’They did not forget. In

December 1976, Mutter wason her way to her Berlin audi-tion with ‘‘absolutely nohopes’’. She was so convincedshe would fail that she felt no

nerves, nothing.‘‘I just went on stage and

played and was ready to go home.Then I bumped into [Karajan]

leaving the hall and I rememberhim saying that he was very

much looking forward to col-laborating with me nextyear in Salzburg.

‘‘The earth stood still.’’Except that for Mutter,

nothing stands still for long.Her first Berlin encounterwas the start of an intensecreative partnership withKarajan. With him she recor-ded most of the great violin

concertos, starting withMozart, and working throughBeethoven, Brahms, Mendels-sohn and Tchaikovsky.

‘‘The period between beingan instinctive musician andbecoming an aware musician,a reasoning musician, is a veryimportant one and has to hap-pen early in your teens,’’ Mut-ter says. ‘‘Karajan taught me tofind the common thread thatruns through a score, to thinkthe music through to its logicalconclusion and impose a sense ofdirection on it. Karajan taught menot simply to juxtapose notes inlong, overarching paragraphsbut to place them in the serviceof the musical idea.’’

It is Mutter’s unswervingquest for the ‘‘musical idea’’that has put off some of hercritics, who find her stagepresence sullen, evenarrogant. But, unlikesome other best-sellingviolin soloists, Mutter

4 SPECTRUM DECEMBER 3-4, 2011 The Sydney Morning Herald

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‘Once you are in thatlanguage of music, youare totally immersed.’

does not aim to win audiencesthrough charm. ‘‘I’m not in themood to smile while I’m playing;I’m there to transmit the music,’’she says.

Mutter also vehemently rejectswhat she sees as misguidedattempts at popularising classicalmusic through gimmicks, slick mar-keting and dumbing down.

‘‘We don’t have to downsize it, wedon’t have to make a comic strip outof Shakespeare, necessarily. Musicis out there in all its beauty and allits complexity. There are pieceswhich are more fun to listen to andothers that are more complex andthere is a time for all of these piecesin our lives.’’

She stops and thinks, anxious topress home her point.

‘‘My son is a passionate pianoplayer. He will not become a musi-cian but he loves it. He used to adoreonly Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninovwhen he was a teenager and now hefalls in love with Mozart. It seems totouch a string in his heart and hissoul, and it is a period where heneeds that.

‘‘What I am saying is that music isso complex that as you are growingup as a teenager, you will find alanguage which you can connect to,a language which is so irresistiblyfascinating and touching that youcan’t escape.

‘‘Once you are in that language ofmusic, you are totally immersed.And that’s what makes music suchan eternally and universally pre-cious language.’’

This fiercely held belief hasinformed her entire life. The photosfrom her early years, playing herfirst public concert, with the SwissWinterthur Stadtorchester, at nine,show a moon-faced child withgolden curls and solemn eyes.

Pictures from her Karajan-BerlinPhilharmonic days feature a plumpteenager in sensible knits in deepconversation with a man 50 yearsher senior. Her swanlike transfor-mation into the svelte, blondebombshell who drives a Porsche,has cover-girl photos and wearsChanel has been coincidental ratherthan instrumental in her phenome-nal success.

Nevertheless, the combination oftalent, intellect and looks hasproved irresistible to a string ofolder men who have shaped thisexceptional artist.

First, there was Karajan. Then

there was conductor Paul Sacher,who threw her into the deep end ofspiky, modern music by commis-sioning a concerto from iconicPolish composer Witold Lutoslaw-ski, sparking her ongoing engage-ment with music of the 20th and21st centuries.

Along the way, there was also herfirst marriage, to Karajan’s lawyer,Detlef Wunderlich, 30 years hersenior. (Wunderlich died of cancerin 1996, leaving her with two youngchildren.) For a while, she wasassociated with Russian cellistMstislav Rostropovich, then in his70s, with whom she recorded andperformed much of her chambermusic repertoire. In 2002, she mar-ried pianist and composer AndrePrevin. He was 73, she was 39. Theyhave since divorced but remainclose. She will play two new worksby Previn next year and calls himher ‘‘in-house composer’’.

Now, as she approaches 50, Mut-ter is very much her own woman.She is the executive figurehead of asmall industry that, as she explains,encompasses performing andrecording, regular benefit perform-ances and a charitable foundationthat mentors young string players,all of which she oversees herself.

She has also taken the initiativemusically, commissioning some ofclassical music’s most admiredcomposers to write substantial,tough new works for her, which shetours widely. In the past three years,she has also stepped up to the podi-um, leading orchestras such as theLondon Philharmonic and theBoston Symphony Orchestra ‘‘fromthe fiddle’’, as she puts it.

Small wonder she does not havetime to practise every day. Luckilyfor her, the technical demands ofplaying her instrument seem to bethe least of her worries.

‘‘I have never been a musicianwho believed or needed hour-longdrilling sessions. [You work out] fin-gerings and the logic of your handmovement more by thinking aboutit than stupid repeating mechan-isms. I was taught at a very earlystage that it is more about reason-ing, more about looking at a piece ofmusic and envisioning it in yourinner ear.’’

So whether you listen to herimmaculate recordings of the greatviolin concertos or see her perform-ing, svelte and spectacular, beassured she is not just turning onthe charm and churning out thenotes. Anne-Sophie Mutter is givingyou a piece of her mind.

ASM35: TheCompleteMusician isout now.Mutter playswith theSydneySymphony at theOperaHouse onMarch30 and31.

The Sydney Morning Herald DECEMBER3-4, 2011 SPECTRUM 5

Book your passage to travel theworldwithout leaving home

Richard Glover

Every time you pickup a story, it leavessomething behind.

M y travel plans for thissummer involve a trip tothe small Lancashire town

ofAccrington, stayingwith a familyof quitemadPentecostalevangelists, followed by a long stayinNewark, NewJersey.My onlychallenge: surviving the polioepidemic that is sweeping that city’ssweltering schools and playgrounds.I have organised local tour guides.

For the first, it will be novelistJeanetteWinterson, whowill nodoubt tellme her own story oflesbianismand loss of faith as sheshowsmearound. For the second, Iwill be relying onPhilip Roth,who Ihavemet upwithmost Christmasesfor the past decade or two.Rothwill be takingme to the

Newark of 1944,when polio killedoffmany of the city’s children.InWinterson’s case, it will be

Accrington of the late 1960s and therather odd family that adopted heras a baby. I will need nopassport forthe trip, no travel injections andwillface no danger of industrial actionfromQantas.Every reader knows about the

strange time-travelling ability ofbooks. The local library, we realisedearly, was the cheapest travel agentin town.Sowhy is all this so baffling to the

makers of thenew filmAnonymous?Maybeyouhave readabout themovie itself, or perhaps attempts bySonyPictures toplace propagandafor the film inAmerican classrooms.The film claims that Shakespeare didnotwrite theplays of Shakespeare,principally becausehenevertravelled outsideBritain.Howcouldhe, it argues, have knownsomuchabout European cities, their historyand their culture?TheEarl ofOxfordtravelledwidely inEurope, so hemust havewritten theplays.This is not only a spectacularly

dumbargument — the Earl of Oxforddied before the last dozen playswerewritten — it is also deeply anti-intellectual. It ignores the power ofliteraturewhile pretending tocelebrate it. Let’s say it out loud:Shakespeare knew things becausehe read about them— in books andin plays. Hewent to a decent schoolin Stratford and the books he found

there openedup aworld of ideas,characters and stories. Enthusiasticreadersmight remember the samefeeling from their own early visits tothe library.Then,most likely, Shakespearejoined a groupof travelling players.They presented traditional stories,the future playwright perhapssuggesting changes. The plays, andthe experience of performing them,left their own residue of knowledge.This is howbooks andplayswork:every time you pick up a story, itleaves something behind.Shakespeare’s genius remainsimpenetrable andmysterious —but not themethodhe used tolearn things.Anonymous trivialiseswhat usedto be called ‘‘book learning’’ — ourability to access information secondhand. How could you knowaboutVenice if you have not been there?Amillion book readers shout back:‘‘By reading about it!’’This is one of humanity’s centralskills; an attribute that separates usfrom the other animals. Animalscommunicate, of course: there is

evidence that Australian birds areteaching each other to kill canetoadswithout ingesting the poison.Yet they can’t quite dowhatwe can:learn frompeoplewe have nevermet; spend timewith people fromanother century; enjoy a sense of aplacewehave never visited.Sometimes a place visited in abook stays in thememorymorevividly than a place visitedphysically. I amhazy on theHongKong I visited in 1989and theHobart of 2001 but I can easilydirect you around the London of1974, which I toured on the armofHanif Kureishi, or Levin’ssnowbound farm inRussia, asmapped byLeoTolstoy.These places glow in themind inawaynot alwaysmatchedby placesvisited physically.Occasionally, I amstill overcomeby the opportunity of reading; thepure good fortune of it. Given acomputer or awell-stockedbookshelf, you could be sittingwithPlatowithin a fewminutes ofreading this sentence. Just the twoof you, as intimate as that sounds.Or tramping theHinduKushwithEric Newby. Or driving throughmiddleAmericawithAnneTyler.Anonymous is partly annoyingbecause it is secretly about socialclass. How could someone sobrilliant come froma fatherwhowas amere tradesman?More annoying is that it is a filmabout thewrittenword that seemsunaware of the liberating andtransforming powers of that samewrittenword. It repackages the age-old distrust of ‘‘book learning’’, witha bit of classist abuse thrown in.The film’smakersmight notunderstand the power of literatureand storytelling but Shakespeareunderstood it — and so does everyteenagerwho ever opened a bookand became lost in a rush ofsensations; feelings of escape, ofnot being alone, of beingsomewhere else, of being someoneelse. A journey away fromself andinto an empathy that real travelmatches — but only sometimes.Itmay be true that Shakespearedid not travel. He did not need to; hehad literature.