I wasn’t expecting to laugh as hard as I did when I interviewed Anne-Sophie Mutter about turning 60.
But as she describes the tortoise roaming the living room of her formative violin teacher Erna Honigberger (‘She was like Dr Doolittle’) or waiting all day to play for Henryk Szeryng while his hairdresser attended him (‘It was very vanity-ish’), or being coached on legato by Herbert von Karajan ten minutes to curtain-up (‘I hardly had time to hop into my dress, tune the fiddle and go on stage’), all delivered in a cheery Black Forest sing-song, with plenty of ‘Jeeesus Christ’ and ‘Oh Gooddd’ thrown in, I spend a lot of our phone call belly laughing. Her poise and authority on stage and the intensity of her sound world belie a wicked sense of humour.
Nor was I expecting that one of today’s pre-eminent violinists would be so pessimistic about violin playing. But Mutter is worried: ‘Every generation has to struggle with a kind of neutral playing, a safe approach to music.
A crisis in violin playing
'I recently reread Joseph Szigeti’s book, which he wrote in the 1960s. There are very dramatic sentences about the lack of personality in string playing and that there was a crisis. I could say the same in 2023 – there’s a crisis in violin playing.’
What does she see as the cause? ‘It has to do with schooling and the lack of enough different approaches to violin playing. There’s too much similarity, which makes it one-dimensional.
'We have lost the great Russian school of David Oistrakh. Every generation has maybe one musician who is capable of transmitting music and what it means on such an individual level to a group of students.’ What is her prognosis? ‘It goes in waves. We can only pray for a few fabulous pedagogues like Aida Stucki to help us nudge things from a more neutral, fairly boring way of playing to taking more risks.’
'I needed to invest myself into society more'
Mutter has certainly done her bit to support young string players, creating a foundation in 1997 to offer them scholarships, instruments, lessons and advice – recipients have included Daniel Müller-Schott, Roman Patkoló, Sergey Khachatryan and Arabella Steinbacher. ‘It came out of a feeling that I needed to invest myself into society more, to look more closely where music was needed.’
In today’s music world, this kind of high-powered support is missing, she suggests, which might be precipitating the crisis: ‘I am of a generation where there were still much older conductors who had a keen interest in the young generation of singers and instrumentalists. That was my lucky moment.
'Having a conductor like Karajan take you on tour, discuss repertoire and believe in you – that is something which I see with great fear, regret and sadness isn’t happening these days. I would wish for my younger generation of colleagues more of these conductors who would say, “Okay, I believe in this girl or that boy.”‘
The crisis doesn’t seem to be affecting cellists and pianists, though. She runs through today’s piano stars: ‘Grigory Sokolov, Daniil Trifonov, Khatia Buniatishvili, Yuja Wang – they’re all very strong, very different personalities. We need them all. It’s not a question of better – that’s nonsense in art.
'We need a variety of viewpoints on music'
'Buniatishvili’s highly personal way of playing might be disturbing to someone who wants a more blunt, straightforward reading. Fine. As long as we have a garden full of great personalities, I’m totally happy.
'We need a variety of viewpoints on music. We have to foster that and take into account that there is not only one way to Rome, to a score. There are many and we must take the time and effort, outside our comfort zones, to question what we are doing.’
Who taught Anne-Sophie Mutter?
Mutter’s own musical style was initially influenced by two teachers. The first was Erna Honigberger, a former Carl Flesch student who by a quirk of family circumstances was teaching in the Black Forest – ‘in the woods, literally’.
She put the play into playing and took the six-year-old Mutter to her first concert – featuring David Oistrakh, no less. ‘The personality, the warmth, the presence of this great musician shaped my understanding of what a great musician is – about music and not him or herself.’
Mutter was only nine when Honigberger died, and looking for another Flesch proponent, sought out Szeryng. His hair eventually coiffed, he heard her Bach and gave her some advice: ‘Never tune on stage because people don’t pay to hear you tune. He was absolutely right, so I stopped that.
'And I used to do this knee-bending number, like many of us do, and he said “Why are you doing this? You are not a gymnast, you are a violinist.” He also recommended she study with Aida Stucki, who had previously turned her down as a child, but was now ready to take her on.
'She was a total genius'
Mutter credits Stucki with creating the musical personalities that she misses now. ‘She was a total genius. Looking back, I realise how personalised her choice of repertoire was at each stage of the development of her students.
'Of course, she had excellent students, but even between the excellent and the super-excellent, she was able to nurture the different personalities and make us so much better as players and musicians – curious and well equipped with some answers, but with the openness to ask more questions, and to be self-sufficient.’
What was it like working with Herbert von Karajan?
Anne-Sophie Mutter graduated from studies with Stucki at the age of 16, by which time her career was flying. She first worked with von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic at the age of 13. What was that like?
‘He was able to bring the best out in all of us. It was a mixture of the huge respect we all had for him and maybe a tad of fear that you would not be good enough – or maybe a lot of fear! He had the way of listening to all of us, and particularly the soloist, and to carry you through the concert. He was very strict, very demanding in rehearsals.
'I learned to play extremely slow tempos, which was very much against my fiery temperament. I also learnt ‘agogy’ – to manoeuvre the music to have a narrative quality between the bar lines and not over the bar line.’
This understanding also relates to Anne-Sophie Mutter's love of jazz. ‘I grew up with recordings of classical music and jazz and literature. Jazz became my complete obsession.
'If we talk about musicians who have influenced me, it’s always Aida, von Karajan, Rostropovich and every composer I’ve ever worked with. But it's also someone like Ella Fitzgerald: her way of phrasing, her legato. Her incredibly long-spun musical narrative, how she dealt with time, how she never slowed down or speeded up.
'There was always a swing in the music, a liveliness and the kind of momentum that I miss very often in classical music performances. We lose track of pulse, particularly string players, because we are this melodic instrument. Pulse is more part of your musical education in more percussive instruments like the piano.’
'I'm against dogmatic thinking in any subject of life'
And how does Anne-Sophie Mutter feel about the influence of historical performance on today’s students? ‘I’m against dogmatic thinking in any subject of life. There is an entire universe between senza vibrato and con vibrato and I’m not a friend of either.
'I rely on a thoughtful process of enhancing a musical line with vibrato or with the senza vibrato modus. It is a tool, not a sauce you want to put on everything, because it can diminish the structural development.
'If anything has evolved in my playing, I would say it is the better controlled understanding of what vibrato can do in terms of highlighting the architecture of music. With a string instrument, the danger is that you totally forget the vertical lines. You need a lot of experience and control to use the expressive tool in a way that does justice to the style and score.’
Anne-Sophie Mutter on the relationship between music and mental health
So, personality, pulse, vibrato – all pitfalls for today’s violinists. One thing she sees improving for younger generations is mental health. ‘There are two very important pillars of a musician’s life – your mental health and physical health.
'Neither have been addressed in my generation at all. Hopefully, they are going to be addressed more with the younger generations, because my generation is speaking up. I’m a health nut and always have been. I’m crazy about sports, particularly on tour, and clean, healthy food.’
That’s how she stays healthy. But, after more than 40 years in the business, how does Anne-Sophie Mutter keep the passion? She invokes Monet and his famous waterlilies: ‘For the last 20 years of his life, Monet was basically painting water lilies. He explained that he wasn’t necessarily interested in the water lilies, but what they evoked in him, his relationship to them at different times. Isn’t that wonderful?
'That is true when I come back to a piece. I might have played it a thousand times, but my relationship to it has changed because I’ve performed Thomas Adès or read a great book – or a bad book. Always, I take the time and care to accept that my relationship with the piece has changed.’
How old is Anne-Sophie Mutter?
Anne-Sophie Mutter turns 60 in 2023, which precipitates a limited-edition box set of her early recordings on vinyl for Deutsche Grammophon. There's also a continuing world tour and a documentary. But I’m not surprised by the short shrift I get when I ask her how she feels about it.
‘I celebrate every birthday. I love to celebrate life generally. It’s another birthday. Let’s not look back. Let’s look forward and make the best out of what’s happening today. We don’t know what will happen tomorrow, so enjoy the moment.’
Anne-Sophie Mutter is also a self-confessed Roger Federer fan girl. Although sport might seem more technical than creative to less athletic types, the violinist regards Federer (now retired as a tennis professional) as a true artist.
'Art has to do with self-doubt'
‘Art has to do with self-doubt, renewing yourself, being open to all the possibilities of perceiving music. Pursuing music, having great joy on stage, sharing music. That should be the goal above anything: communicating being there in the moment, giving it your all.
'Of course, you are aiming for technical perfection because that’s the groundwork from which you can take off like a bird. That’s like being an athlete. Federer has been exemplary and a great inspiration for me personally because he always brought so much passion, precision, joy and persistence to his game. That pretty much sums up what being an artist is about.’
Musicians can learn from athletes and their sports psychology, she says. ‘You need to know yourself. That only makes sense if you already have a certain type of experience and have mastered the balance between being self-critical without self-destructing.
'One can learn a lot by watching great athletes, particularly ones who do single sports like tennis. What do they say after a match? How do they go about having just lost an entire tournament because they couldn’t close the game? They are very self-critical, but also confident and positive about what they have achieved and understanding that it’s the day’s form.’