"I became a musician because i awnted to change the world through
music, to unite everyone with the same emotion, at the same moment,
through a work by Beethoven."
-- Anne-Sophie Mutter

Listening to Anne-Sophie Mutter play the Beethoven violin concerto live
two nights in a row is the holiest of holy grails. On stage, she called
this piece the composer's "most philosophical work." It is probably his
most humanistic, searching music too, full of tension and introspective questions to itself. (Ken Loach made extensive use of it in _My Name
is Joe_, perhaps his most powerful and best film.) Mutter has not played
this crowning concerto achievement in the U.S. ever since I started going
to her concerts in 2006. I always thought that she would retire with a
tour of the Beethoven, which marked her true, legendary debut with Herbert
von Karajan. But in recent years she has if anything been rejunvenated.
After two plus years of touring this concerto in Europe, she finally
brought it to Montreal and other U.S. cities on this 250th anniversary
of the composer's birth year. When I listened to her Brahms concerto in
San Francisco a couple years ago, how I wished I had bought tickets for
more than one night. This time I made no mistake, and indeed two sittings
were required to take in the immensity and complexity of the 50-minute masterwork. I was sitting in the second and then the front row, and I
could swear that, on the second night, Mutter shot me a frown, as if to
say: you again? Nothing better to do?

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Christian Macelaru guest-conducted the Montreal symphony orchestra in
place of Kent Nagano. For the first time in my experience the concerto
was left to the second half, after the intermission. The first piece
selected was Karim Al-Zand's "Scenes from a City." The Houston-based
composer was on hand for this boisterous piece that is like a massive
traffic jam, although the middle stanza is a serene, atonal relief.
(Note to self -- don't go to Houston.) Then came an orchestrated version
of Brahm's piano quartet #1. I love Brahms but the original is never
my favorite of his, and Schoenberg's orchestration is a mixed bag. In particular, the second movement is so impish and slight, it really does
not translate for a full orchestra. (Time and again the first violin
section idly sat by.) Schoenberg should have gone pizzacato all the way,
like in Benjamin Britten's innovative "Simple Symphony." The piano has
often substituted for the orchestra in violin show pieces in Mutter's
concerts; doing the reverse in the first movement of this piano quartet paradoxically yields less variation and color. The last two movements
are more inventive; Brahms' trademark lushness, richness of tone is
well-served by the orchestration in the slow movement (is this the stanza
that motivated Schoenberg to give orchestration a try?), while the famous
waltz passage in the fourth -- first rendered powerfully with strings
and then lightly, acidly with trumpets -- probably saves the piece all
by itself. This waltz sequence is the highlight in George Sluizer's _Utz_,
I believe. The orchestra has an eclectic mix of youth and experience,
and one fiery red-head -- probably the leader of the 2nd violin section
-- is the spitting image of Blair Brown in her days of "Molly Dodd."
Montreal is one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world, but there
are only 2 or 3 minorities in the string section. -------------------------------------------------------------------------

Anne-Sophie Mutter's strapless ball gown was elegant and black, decorated
at the hemline with bold red and orange blossoms -- and also green leaves.
Her performance was a similar mix of tradition, boldness, and fresh inspiration. She probably wore the same outfit in the centennial
celebration of Herbert von Karajan recorded on DVD. A sign of old-world superstition, or of dedication to rememberance? In that 2008 concert in
Vienna, conducted by Seiji Ozawa, her performance was very much like the recording she made with her late mentor, as if she was constrained by the weight of history. In Montreal, her play was far more dramatic -- she would hold some notes a fraction of a second longer and make the pauses a bit
more pregnant with expectation. It was not unlike her 2002 Avery Fisher
Hall recording with Kurt Masur, the main difference being that the cadenzas (both by Kreisler) were played with unheard of fiendish ferocity and speed.
I have Her bowing and fingering were so astonishingly precise for all the power and speed brought to bear. At the end of the first cadenza horse
hairs were flying, her ownhair was as dishevelled as I've seen, and the
emotion in symphony hall were palpable. I was exhausted just listening to
the 26-minute log first movement; having a second night to focus on the
later movements was essential.

The rest of the concerto, as she so eloquently describes in the 2002 CD
liner notes, is not at all a virtuoso piece; it is remarkably collaborative, and the violin often plays a supporting, sustaining role. Having said that, the second movement is dominated by the solo instrument, which plays almost non-stop, if mostly in a muted register. It is devastatingy sad, and
Mutter exerted exquite control of the volume, sometime trailing to a whisper. If the slow movement of Beethoven's 3rd symphony is Napoleon's funeral march, the Larghetto here must be a requiem for a great, mystery lady. The
Rondo Allegro recovers with joyous, even playful melody; the transition
from the violent cadenza to light-hearted notes at the very end must be
even more challenging than the end of the first movement.

(Mutter drapes her white towel over her shoulder during the cadenzas and
at the beginning of the second movement on the first night. Famed for her sartorial sophistication, she finally also did something with her humble
towel, which had red dots in it and no longer looked like something stolen
from Motel 6! The second night was drier, and after the first cadenza she completely dispensed with the towel. The audience also coughed incessantly.
It was amazing how much difference a few percents of humidity made.)

The encore was the "Sarabande" from Bach's solo violin partitas, just
like in her 2008 Vienna concert with Seiji Ozawa. Baroque specialists frequently complain about Mutter's Bach. It is true that her Sarabande
lacked the variation in volume that so distinguished her performance of
the Beethoven concerto,* but it was certainly powerful, emotional, andunforgettable in its own right.


(for A., a great violinist in her own right)



*Hilary Hahn, despite her tender years, is probably a world authority on
the Bach solo pieces for violin; legend has i that she plays selections of
them every day. I went to her San Francisco recital last year. Every
time a motif is repeated, she played it much, much softer than the first
time. The "Ice Princess," seldom known to make mistakes, was very erratic
that night, although she was perfect with the show stopper, the Partita #2.
She made me realize how difficult the Bach pieces are. Hahn bows as
emphatically and dramatically as Mutter, but her small stature means that
she has to use a lot of back muscles to generate the same kind of power.
Mutter can create such booming, emphatic notes out of flicks of her strong
arms. She is truly a "centennial discovery" by von Karajan, never to be
surpassed.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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