SFist Interviews Anne-Sophie Mutter

Yeah, she says, and she speaks so fast we have the hardest time transcribing these notes, but you know my repertoire is very large, I haven't played all of it over here. So it's one of these pieces that needed some time to come around. And now we have the big birthday celebration, which is even more reason to concentrate on this wonderful, very diverse composer and musician, Mendelssohn.

How difficult is it to bring a fresh approach to such a well known piece? I'm an artist who has never any kind of difficulty to get excited about a piece. The question is, over decades of revisiting a certain repertoire, if you are able to find some new viewpoints. And in the case of Mendelssohn's violin concerto, which I hadn't played in a couple years, getting to now more of his songs was very helpful. That gave me a different idea about the slow movement, for example.

Which songs, we interrupted, the songs without words? No, no. I mean specifically the Gondoliere. Of course, the songs without words are wonderful masterpieces, but there is not a direct connection to the violin concerto. Whereas, in one of the Gondoliere song, the accompanying figure of the piano is exactly the same as he uses in the violin concerto's 2nd movement. Reading the text and you know, once again, ackowledging that this man had this kind of drive inside himself, this kind of fluidity, and almost always forward moving motion, this youthful impatience, this sheds light on the concerto. It is not a highly romantic piece, it is rather a neo-classic. I would rather lean it towards Mozart rather than towards what comes after Mendelssohn, stylistically.

You just recorded the violin concerto alongside a piano trio, which is pretty dramatic and romantic!

Oh yes, of course, it's highly romantic music. But it has no heaviness. It has no over romantic sweetness to it. There's still the pureness of the youthful approach to emotions. There is the closeness to Mozart's very pure music making. The reason that I did not record another solo violin concerto piece [on that CD] is that I wanted to really show Mendelssohn as a chamber musician. He was very passionate about playing chamber music himself. He used to say that playing chamber music is like having a conversation with sophisticated friends.

And my God, playing with Lynn Harrell and Andre Previn, how more sophisticated can it get? And then there is this wonderful Late F Major sonata, of 1838 which concludes, so to speak, the recording, and I think it shows Mendelssohn's various role as composer, but also as performer, not only as the conductor for the violin concerto [with Ferdinand David as a soloist, playing what is now SF Symphony's Sasha Barantschik's violin], but also as the man who did for the world premiere of the trio on the piano.

You're here to play the piece of Sofia Gubaidulina, which you already recorded on a CD with violin concertos of Bach. What's the connection?

Sofia Gubaidulina very often uses titles of Bach's oeuvre in her music, like Offertorium. She also uses quotes of Bach's music, like she did in Offertorium [Sofia's previous violin concerto], in order to make it her own. There is a large fascination she has with the math behind Bach's construction of music.

But Bach has been, more than probably any composer through the centuries, an enormous influence, on the --actually on Mendelssohn by the way-- on composers up to this day. It's fascinating to see that there is either a spiritual bond, or a fascination as Bach as a master of fugal improvisation. Many of his chorals up to this day, and the harmonies he's using, are so sophisticated and complicated and modern, that is not at all the dated man that he was looked at when he died. For eighty years, he was totally forgotten. And it was Mendelssohn, whose family used to own a lot of original manuscripts of Bach, Mendelssohn was a baptized Jew, who resurrected Bach. He did the first performance, eighty years after Bach's death, of Matthew's Passion.

Since you bring up the mathematics, I found some echoes of the number-fascinated Alban Berg's violin concerto into In tempus präsens.

Every contemporary composer, every good composer has a sense for architecture and for proportion and for measurements. Because a great composer will no compose anything accidentally or go for an effect that has no purpose behind. This is not totally uncommon, but it is something that Gubaidulina is very fascinated in Bach's music.

The philosophical idea behind the hopeful ending links those two pieces together. And they are very powerful, it's interesting that you make this connection, because other than the Gubaidulina and the Berg, there is nothing as powerful written over the last 100 years in the violin repertoire.

That's a strong statement!

It's a strong piece, I tell you. It's a life changing experience. I did a two and a half hour rehearsal earlier, and I still haven't recovered from it.

The piece strikes us as very intense, but also very controlled and very cerebral. Do you feel this control in your playing?

I don't think so. Yes, it is cerebral. But she is, like Berg did it in his concerto, and that's very unusual for 12 tone, it's genius music because it is so masterfully written, but what I think about all, is the intensity of human struggle, the intensity of the person, Sofia, behind it. Yes it is cerebral, but once you sit in the concert hall and you hear it live, there is much more to it than that. What I admire about the piece is that it is so artfully written, but it has a urgency of powerful emotions which is almost shattering.

On a YouTube clip put together by the SF Symphony, you say you never discussed the piece with her before you started rehearsal for the world premiere?

I met her on the day of the first piano rehearsal, which was the day of the first orchestra rehearsal, three or four days before the world premiere. She was incredibly, how should I say, she really seemed to like what I did, which was a great gift to me. We took it from there. Sometimes, it just clicks between a composer and the little slave who is the modest player of this great music. In this case, i guess, I've been lucky enough to get under the skin of the piece and bring out what she meant to have brought out.

So you came up with this reading you just talked about of Sofia's conflict just by looking at the score?

Analysis is very important, but I think deep down, there is something in the music that I relate to as a person. I can't explain it, that's just the way it it. I think that has to be this way with everything you play. You have to totally immerse yourself into it, you have to throw yourself into it. It is impossible to not be sucked into Gubaidulina's world. It is so powerful, so intense that it is unavoidable, it just takes you in.

We then got to chat a bit on the fact that Sofia was the first ever composer-in-residence for the symphony.

It's just wonderful. For everybody it's a real blessing. It's great for the audience, they get to know realy exciting new stuff and can expand their vision of music. There will be lots of young people, because young people are terribly attracted to modern music, which I find very exciting. And then for the musicians, it's a challenge, it pushes us to the limits of our humble existences and it makes us better musicians and it's an incredibly enriching process. And it's important for the composer to hear their pieces performed and see how they evolve, how they grow, how the audience loves them and how the audience responds to them and appreciate all the effort, all these years and years of wrestling with every little dot on the paper. So I'm very glad that San Francisco gives Sofia Gubaidulina such a warm welcome.