Mutter's Mozart Sonatas

Available at Amazon: Mozart, Violin Sonatas, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Lambert Orkis (released on September 19, 2006)

Mutter Mozart Project: Jens F. Laurson, Violin Concerti (December 31, 2005)

Anne-Sophie Mutter certainly had no compelling reason like financial need behind her ambitious Mozart Project, the recording of all the major Mozart works for violin that she undertook for the past year or so. She is wealthy beyond the dreams of most classical musicians, and demand for her playing keeps her just as busy as she could ever want to be. The Mozart centenary, now mercifully almost at an end, offered a convenient excuse. When she answered the Proust Questionnaire, Mutter stated that her historical heroes and heroines were Mozart, Gandhi, and Mother Teresa, in that order. This is a musician we can expect to approach every phrase Mozart wrote for the violin with clean hands and clean spirit, like the sacred scriptures of her personal shrine.

Mozart Project: Violin Concerti, Sinfonia Concertante (2005) Piano Trios, with André Previn, Daniel Müller-Schott (2006) Forthcoming on DVD (February 13, 2007): Violin Sonatas Piano Trios Violin Concerti

Mutter and her performing partner, pianist Lambert Orkis, have been touring three programs of selections from this album around Europe and lately North America, concluding with a final recital here in Washington last week, an event that unfortunately I had to miss. I have enjoyed listening to this set of four CDs, containing 16 of the Mozart violin sonatas, what Mutter considers "the great violin sonatas." My advice would probably be to wait for the release of the DVD this February, where you will have the same tracks with video, at a reduced price (via Amazon, $46 for the CD set and $30 for the DVDs). If you wait for the whole box set of DVDs, it may be offered at an even further reduced price, with a pretty case. (The packaging of the CDs is aesthetically very pleasing to the eye.) It seems to me that the way to experience Mutter is with eyes and ears together.

Orkis and Mutter play well together, with a clear sense of having collaborated for many years. Orkis has a refined touch for Mozart, with at the same time the technical ability for the most difficult passages, especially in the virtuosic K. 526 (A major, CD 4), and to stand well on his own as in the second movement of K. 305 (A major, CD 2). Mutter's playing is impeccable, but whether the interpretation seems right varies from movement to movement. Mutter calls K. 304 (E minor, CD 4) her favorite sonata, and her reading of it is the most intense on the four discs. The lovely second movement (Tempo di Menuetto) has a suffocated, self-strangling main theme, and Mutter makes her violin almost raspy. Press handlers and Mutter herself have singled out K. 304 as the only Mozart sonata in a minor key, and while that may indeed be significant, there are single movements in minor keys, too. For example, the minor-mode theme and variations in K. 377 (F major, CD 4), is particularly nice, especially the concluding Siciliana. Here Mutter gives us some of her least affected playing, with one folk-like wail she adds in the final minute.

There are a few minor problems, as in the first movement of K. 296 (C major, CD 3), in which the tempo never settles, with Orkis seeming to jump ahead at times. Mutter has such strength in her sound that when she tries to make her tone narrow or simple, as in the Puckish first movement of K. 378 (B-flat major, CD 2), it loses too much interest. (An exception is the sweet second-movement theme and variations of K. 379 -- G major, CD 1 -- but it is dominated by the piano.) Combined with the occasional idiosyncrasies, like the tendency of Mutter's tone to turn a little toward roughness or darkness, that means that this set of Mozart sonatas is unlikely to become a favorite, at least for me. That does not mean that there is not much to admire, but this is not a crucial purchase. For Mutter fans, wait for the DVD.

Deutsche Grammophon B0007102-02