Famous throughout the world for her performances and recordings, Anne-Sophie Mutter has graced the Chicago area for concertos and recitals both downtown during the season and in the summer at the Ravinia Festival.  More details about the artist can be found in the box at the bottom of this webpage.

She was back in Chicago in May of 1989 for the Beethoven Violin Concerto with the Chicago Symphony conducted by Sir Georg Solti.  I attended the first half of the program and then rode back with her in the limo to her hotel for this conversation.

Portions of this conversation were aired on WNIB, Classical 97, and now the entire chat has been transcribed for presentation on this webpage.  As usual, names which are links refer to my interviews elsewhere on this website.

A few days prior, when setting up the meeting, I told her it might be tricky since I worked evenings and overnights at the radio station, and slept during the day . . . . . . . . .


Bruce Duffie:    Thank you very much for taking the trouble to meet with me on a busy day.

Ann-Sophie Mutter:    No, I’m happy that it’s at least worked out with your nightlife.  [Laughs]

BD:    That’s right, with both of our crazy schedules.  Well, let’s start right there.  Do you keep an absolutely rigid routine every day that you concretize, or every day that you even just practice?

A-SM:    No, no.  No day is like the other, and no two are like any others.  Before coming to United States I did a really monstrous German tour.  I did 32 concerts in 35 days, and I played every evening two concertos.  I played Lutoslawski

always is with you.  It’s like a companion.

BD:    It’s just simmering in your mind all the time?

A-SM:    Yes.

BD:    Do you learn one piece when you’re actually performing another piece?

A-SM:    No, never.  That I never do.  I don’t feel comfortable with preparing one piece in the morning and playing another one in the evening.  No, I don’t like that.  Also, in preparing something, if I have to prepare five or six different works within one month, I always work one day one piece, but never several pieces in a day.  I think it’s better for the memorizing process, also.  It’s easier that way.

BD:    How do you divide your career between concerts and recitals and chamber music?

A-SM:    That usually is happening more or less by accident, because chamber music is something which is very difficult to schedule.  If you make trios, or quartets, or recitals, you always have to have the partners you want in the period you are free, or when you have them reserved.  So mostly it doesn’t work out as I really would like to have it, but I would say it’s about 80 percent orchestra and the rest is recital.  It was a lot of trio in the past, and it will be much more recital later.  Before the trio I also had a period in which I worked only recital.  Usually I restrict myself to one or two forms of chamber music.

BD:    Does the chamber music have a special fascination for you?

A-SM:    Yes, absolutely special.  It’s fascinating because it’s the most direct way.  It’s the most satisfying way for me when I do chamber music.  I think for all of us it’s the most intimate way of playing music because you are absolutely free to phrase and to get an answer, to respond to what is offered to you every evening.  It’s the most alive form of making music.

BD:    Is there any way of bringing any of this aliveness or intimacy into the orchestral repertoire and the concerto repertoire?

A-SM:    Because of my chamber music work I have changed my attitude towards, for example, works like Mozart’s Violin Concerti, which I now see in a more chamber music-like way.  But in the end there might only be two or three phrasings in a concerto that come out of a chamber music experience because your attitude is so different onstage once you are a soloist, and vice versa.  The moment I started playing trio I must have been a horrible partner [laughs] because my two partners always were shouting at me, and telling me that I just played for myself and I was much too loud.  So you have to change your personality whatever you do if you’re on stage.  As a soloist you have to sometimes fight against an orchestra, or you have to fight with them, but it’s a different kind of approach, a different kind of playing violin.

BD:    Would the same instrument that you use for concertos also be ideal for chamber music?

A-SM:    Yes.  One should be capable of changing the sound himself and of the instrument.

BD:    Do you change the sound of your instrument for your approach if you’re playing the same concert in different cities, in front of different orchestras?

A-SM:    Usually the acoustic influences your way of playing.  If you like it or not, you can’t ignore the fact that some acoustics are carrying you over the first row and others don’t.  So you automatically try to adjust your playing a little bit.  But otherwise in general the changes you make are more because of a different orchestra.  It’s also in tempi you make changes.  For example, if I play in Boston the last movement is much quicker than it would be in any other city because they have the technical ability.  Just the face of the orchestra is showing off more of a brilliance than Vienna Philharmonic.  With Vienna Philharmonic, I would make the second movement much slower than with another orchestra because they have the capacity of really bringing a phrase through without breaking it down.

BD:    So then it’s partly the soloist’s responsibility to show off the orchestra as well as the soloist?

A-SM:    In my opinion, yes.

BD:    Are you pleased with the orchestras that you play in front of all the time, or are there some that you would rather not go back to... and you don’t need to name specific names...

A-SM:    [Laughs]  Yes, there are.  During one year there are some orchestras, one or two, where I would absolutely not want to go back, or some conductors I just didn’t feel very connected to.  It’s not a question of if the conductor really understands what he’s doing, nor a question of his musical capacity.  Sometimes you just do not connect with a musical mind, and then it’s not very satisfying to work.

BD:    I assume, though, that most of your engagements are joyous occasions?

A-SM:    Oh, yes.  Sure.

BD:    Are you still learning from all of the conductors?

A-SM:    Yes.  I’ll learn certainly forever from them.  Over the last twelve years I’ve played this Beethoven Concerto, and before I did the recording I studied it two years with Maestro von Karajan.  It’s one of the works I have studied the longest and most intensely, and I’ve played it the most of my repertory.  With every one of the conductors I’ve worked it, I discovered something or I added something to it.  In the end I don’t think that it’s only one musician or one influence; not even myself is the strongest, but it’s experience.  It’s the life experience I have had in the last twelve years which is melting together.

BD:    You mentioned genius in music.  What is it that makes a particular work have this greatness?  What is the spark that is there?

A-SM:    About Mozart’s compositions it’s just the multiple structure of the work.  In the same moment it’s not the structure you are looking at or the structure you are listening to, but once you play it or you sit in the audience it’s the pure expression of what music has to be.  But without a very intellectual structure, it gets very boring and does not have real depth.

BD:    Have you commissioned any pieces yet?

A-SM:    No, I never dared to commission, because I thought it’s like commissioning a pair of shoes.  You can’t commission that.  Without my pushing, Lutoslawski has dedicated a work to me.  Also Norbert Moret and Penderecki are working on violin concertos which will hopefully be finished by the end of next year.

BD:    Will you have input into some of these works while they’re being written?

A-SM:    I suppose that maybe Penderecki will ask me.  But he’s such a great composer that he doesn’t need my ideas.  [Laughs]

BD:    Will you then be obligated to play his music when it is finished?

A-SM:    I don’t feel obligated.  I’m very much looking forward to it, but actually I was planning to use it for my festival next year in London.  Then I remembered that Penderecki is well-known for delivering the last three or four pages one hour before the performance starts, and I am not the kind of performer who will do that.  I don’t like that, so it’s not scheduled.  [Laughs]

BD:    [With a gentle nudge]  You don’t want to sight read a concert???

A-SM:    No!  [Laughs]  I’ll probably take half a year off to study the work.  But I don’t want to take the risk.

BD:    You might take half a year off to study a piece?

A-SM:    [Laughs]  That sounds good and it’s always my dream, but it never comes true.

BD:    How do you know when the piece is ready to perform?

A-SM:    I never know that. [Laughs]

BD:    You get it into your fingers and you get into the music, but you’ve got to present it sometime.

A-SM:    Yes.  It’s a wonder that artists are capable of thinking they really have brought a piece, or they have shaped a piece in a way they really thought it’s right in going on stage.  That depends very much on the piece.  If it’s chamber music, if it’s a large piece like the Beethoven Concerto, if it’s only a bit of romance, it depends on the piece very much.  But the ideal still is one year.  While touring or just doing other concerts during that period, I would go back to it every second or third month.  That’s really the ideal procedure and is something I always want to stick to.

BD:    How are audiences different from city to city, and country to country?

A-SM:    They are even different in the same city.  The audiences I had here in Chicago were very different on the three evenings.  What fascinates me is the fact that in some countries you are able to really express yourself in live music.  That means more freely using contemporary music.  That’s something I’m very sensitive in noticing, but otherwise it always depends how well a concert is done.  If the concert is good, the public is pretty alike everywhere.

if it’s a violinist or whatever, it doesn’t make any difference — I noticed during my short period of teaching in London that my colleagues are much too focused on the position they want to achieve.  They want to be soloist and this they are not getting there.  They are too focused and they hate music.  The most important thing is to understand that whatever you do in music, whatever level you reach, you are only part of this corps.  If you sit in the second violin section or you stand there in front, it’s only a part.  It’s only one voice in a whole structure, and the most important thing is that you have respect and love for music; that you have enough discipline of trying to reach the highest level possible in your gift you have from God.

BD:    Let me ask the big philosophical question.  What is the purpose of music in society?

A-SM:    For me music has a cleansing and a renewal.  It probably makes each of us to be a better human being for a period

To read my Interview with Mstislav Rostropovich, click HERE.

Anne-Sophie Mutter - Biography from the Deutsche Grammophon website, May, 2015.  (Text only - photos from other sources.) Anne-Sophie Mutter is universally considered to be one of the greatest violinists of modern times. Her artistry embraces everything from tonal richness and consummate technical virtuosity to transcendent expression and profound musicianship. Born in the German border town of Rheinfelden, she showed signs of exceptional talent at an early age. Anne-Sophie began to study piano at the age of five; soon after, she received her first violin lessons from Erna Honigberger, a pupil of Carl Flesch. At the age of nine she commenced studies with Aïda Stucki, one of Switzerland’s finest musicians and an inspirational teacher. In 1976 Herbert von Karajan heard the 13-year-old Mutter in recital at the Lucerne Festival. The legendary conductor subsequently invited the young violinist to make her concerto debut with the Berlin Philharmonic at the 1977 Salzburg Whitsun Festival. Their partnership continued in 1978 when Mutter made her first recording for Deutsche Grammophon, an album of Mozart’s Violin Concertos Nos. 3 and 5. Mutter collaborated regularly with Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic to create a landmark series of recordings of violin concertos by Beethoven, Brahms, Bruch and Mendelssohn for the Yellow Label. Meanwhile her debuts in Berlin (1978), Washington and New York (1980), Tokyo (1981) and Moscow (1985) garnered critical acclaim and helped establish her regular presence at the world’s major concert halls. In 1986 Mutter was appointed International Chair in Violin Studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London. The following year she founded the Rudolf Eberle Trust to support the development of outstandingly gifted young string players throughout Europe. The initiative’s reach extended worldwide in 1997 after it was incorporated into the Friends of the Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation. Mutter’s commitment to the promotion of young musicians has helped launch the careers of many fine artists, Daniel Müller-Schott, Sergey Khachatryan and Roman Patkoló among them. The Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation also supports the Mutter Virtuosi, an ensemble comprising fourteen of the organisation’s former and current scholarship holders. Her Foundation has commissioned André Previn’s Concerto for Violin and Double-bass, Krzysztof Penderecki’s Duo concertante and Wolfgang Rihm’s Dyade. In 2013 she gave the world premiere of Sebastian Currier’s Ringtone Variations, commissioned by the Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation for the Mutter Virtuosi’s Asian tour. Anne-Sophie Mutter’s commitment to the future of string playing extends to her wholehearted championship of contemporary music. In 1986 she gave the first performance of Chain II, written for her and the Paul Sacher Foundation by Witold Lutosławski, and recorded the work for Deutsche Grammophon. Her tally of world premiere performances includes Rihm’s Gesungene Zeit and Lichtes Spiel, Penderecki’s Second Violin Concerto Metamorphosen and La Follia for solo violin, Dutilleux’s Sur le même accord, Gubaidulina’s Violin Concerto In tempus praesens, Previn’s Violin Concerto “Anne-Sophie” and Second Violin Sonata, and Currier’s Aftersong and Time Machines. She has recorded these and many other new works for the Yellow Label, together with such monuments of the 20th-century repertoire as Berg’s and Stravinsky’s Violin Concertos and Bartók’s Second Violin Concerto. Mutter won the Grammy® Award for “Best Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance (with orchestra)” three times, respectively for her recordings of Berg’s Violin Concerto and Rihm’s Gesungene Zeit (1994), Penderecki’s Metamorphosen (1999), and Previn’s Violin Concerto and Bernstein’s Serenade (2005). In the closing years of the 1990s, Mutter recorded Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons with the Trondheim Soloists and Beethoven’s Violin Sonatas with her regular duo partner Lambert Orkis. The latter went on to win Grammy® and Echo Awards, while her Vivaldi album attracted critical acclaim and sold over 370,000 copies worldwide. She began the new millennium with a series of touring and recording projects, including Back to the Future, a retrospective look at major works from the 20th-century violin repertoire, and Recital 2000, an album of chamber works by Crumb, Prokofiev, Respighi and Webern. In 2001 Mutter performed Mozart’s complete violin concertos in two evenings as artist-in-residence at Carnegie Hall and with the Vienna Philharmonic in Vienna and on tour in Germany. Previn’s Tango Song and Dance, dedicated to and premiered by Mutter, formed the core of an eponymous recital album and her touring programme in 2003. Her recordings with Previn as conductor include award-winning accounts of his Violin Concerto “Anne-Sophie” and a pairing of the violin concertos by Korngold and Tchaikovsky (Echo Award 2005 for “Instrumentalist of the Year”). Mutter celebrated the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth in 2006 with international tours and complete recordings of his sonatas and concertos for violin. Highlights of recent seasons include performances and a complete recording of Brahms’s Violin Sonatas with Lambert Orkis; artist-in-residence concerts and chamber music recitals with the New York Philharmonic; an album of first recordings of works by Rihm, Currier and Penderecki (2011), and the release of ASM35, a 40-disc box set of Mutter’s complete recordings for Deutsche Grammophon (2011) issued to mark the 35th anniversary of her professional debut. She was named Musician of the Year 2011 by Musical America, the highest accolade bestowed by one of North America’s most influential and respected arts magazines. In June 2013, Mutter and the Berlin Philharmonic came together at the Berlin Philharmonie, to make their first studio album in 30 years: the resulting recording of Dvořák’s Violin Concerto, Mutter’s first, was released to critical acclaim in October 2013. Two months later she and Lambert Orkis gave a concert at Carnegie Hall to celebrate the silver jubilee of both their artistic partnership and of their recital debut at the venue with a programme that included the world premieres of Penderecki’s La Follia and Previn’s Second Violin Sonata. Deutsche Grammophon also celebrated their milestone anniversary with the release of a two-disc set, The Silver Album (2014). Mutter returned to Carnegie Hall to launch its 2014/15 season in company with the Berliner Philharmoniker and Sir Simon Rattle in October 2014. The opening night gala also marked the beginning of her six-concert term as featured artist in the famous New York venue’s Perspectives series. Perspectives continued the following month with a solo recital of works by Currier, Previn, Franck and Beethoven, and a concert with the Mutter Virtuosi, which included the US premiere of Previn’s Violin Concerto No.2. In February 2015 she celebrated the sesquicentenary of Sibelius’ birth, performing the composer’s Violin Concerto with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. Her Perspectives series closed in April with a recital of piano trios given by the Mutter-Bronfman-Harrell Trio and performances of Berg’s Violin Concerto and Moret’s En rêve with the New World Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas. Anne-Sophie Mutter is set to join the London Symphony Orchestra and André Previn at the Barbican Centre in June 2015 for a special performance of the composer-conductor’s Violin Concerto in honour of his 85th birthday. Future engagements include a 12-concert tour with Lambert Orkis; Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with the Wiener Philharmoniker and Riccardo Muti at the 2015 Salzburg International Festival, and Dvořák’s Violin Concerto with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra at the Sydney Opera House. She is also set to undertake an extensive European tour with the Mutter Virtuosi at the start of the 2015/16 season. Their journey begins at the Edinburgh International Festival in August with the world premiere of André Previn’s Nonet for two string quartets and double-bass, a work commissioned by Anne-Sophie Mutter for the Mutter Virtuosi and dedicated to her. Anne-Sophie Mutter made her debut in Deutsche Grammophon’s Yellow Lounge at Berlin’s Asphalt club on a sweltering night in September 2013, where her 300-strong audience included many young clubbers. She repeated the experience in May 2015 with two dates at Berlin’s Neue Heimat venue, a converted railway station in the city’s bohemian Friedrichshain district. Her performances were recorded live for Deutsche Grammophon’s first Yellow Lounge album, scheduled for release in August 2015. The event was also filmed by ZDF for subsequent television broadcast and as the subject of a future documentary film. Anne-Sophie Mutter has for long used her public profile to support and promote charitable causes, notably those associated with the alleviation of medical and social problems. Her benefit concerts have raised funds for, among other organisations, Save the Children Japan, the Swiss Multiple Sclerosis Society, victims of the 2011 Japanese tsunami and nuclear energy disasters, and the Association des amis de la maison de Solenn in Paris. Other recent benefit projects have included fundraising concerts for the Hanna and Paul Gräb Foundation’s Haus der Diakonie in Wehr-Öflingen, Artists against Aids in the United States, the Bruno Bloch Foundation, and the UK-based Beethoven Fund for Deaf Children. Mutter’s many awards and honours reflect the nature of her humanitarian work as well as the excellence of her artistry. She received the prestigious Ernst von Siemens Music Prize in 2008, the Légion d’honneur in 2009 for services to contemporary French music and the 2011 Erich-Fromm-Preis for the advancement of Humanism through social engagement. Other honours include the Merit Cross 1st Class of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Mendelssohn and Brahms prizes, the Herbert von Karajan Music Prize and the Bavarian Order of Merit. In 2013 Anne-Sophie Mutter became an Honorary Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and in 2015 she was appointed an Honorary Fellow at Keble College, Oxford.

© 1989 Bruce Duffie

This conversation was recorded at her hotel in Chicago on May 13, 1989.  Portions were broadcast on WNIB the following year, and again in 1993 and 1998.  This transcription was made in 2016, and posted on this website at that time.

To see a full list (with links) of interviews which have been transcribed and posted on this website, click here.

Award - winning broadcaster Bruce Duffie was with WNIB, Classical 97 in Chicago from 1975 until its final moment as a classical station in February of 2001.  His interviews have also appeared in various magazines and journals since 1980, and he now continues his broadcast series on WNUR-FM, as well as on Contemporary Classical Internet Radio.