It started a long time ago in a land far, far away. It’s a tale of intrigue, Hollywood trysts and delicious biscuits. It started, as these things so often do, with Star Wars. “John Williams’ music has always accompanied my life,” says Anne-Sophie Mutter. The legendary violinist, who is on the line from Berlin, is explaining how a girl who grew up in West Germany’s backblocks winds up performing a Williams violin concerto with the NZSO in Wellington and Auckland this month.
“In the late 70s, [Williams’] music came even to the remote Black Forest, and I went to see and hear Star Wars. I would never have dared to dream I would meet the man, much less that he would scribble a note for me.”
Mutter sounds genuine but it’s an unnecessary display of humility from someone who has been a world star for 47 of her 60 years. She’s not exactly down to Earth, but nor does she act like she’s famous. (“As a classical musician, are you ever famous?”) Her playing doesn’t sound like she’s famous, either.
“She plays with huge intensity without anything that draws attention to herself; it’s all about the music,” says NZSO concertmaster Vesa-Matti Leppänen, who has been a fan for as long as he can remember and recalls his violin teacher pinning Mutter’s posters on the wall at his Finnish conservatoire. “You can see it in her movements, in the way she behaves on the stage, it’s not about her. She wants people to focus on what she’s playing, which is difficult because she has amazing stage presence.”
For all Mutter’s protestations about the level of fame she enjoys – and the reverence with which she refers to Williams – she has performed with everyone who’s anyone, with all the best orchestras, in all the great concert halls, and for whom the leading composers of our time have written music.
Yes, Williams is Hollywood royalty, as much for the Star Wars series as for his scores to Steven Spielberg’s movies, many of which you’ll be able to hum (Jaws, Close Encounters, Indiana Jones, et al), the first three Harry Potter flicks, the first two Home Alone movies and the numerous others that have seen him accrue five Oscars, seven Baftas, 25 Grammys and four Golden Globes. Still, he would surely jump at the chance to write for one of the world’s leading musicians. But when Mutter asked him, he said no. Her response was to bake the composer biscuits.
“He likes to say I bribed him with cookies. I sent him a box of gingerbread and back came the most charming thank-you note saying he now felt obliged to write something for me. I kept sending him gingerbread as he composed.”
The result of all that baking was the chamber concerto Markings, the start of a mutually beneficial collaboration that has so far included violin arrangements of Williams’ film themes and the concerto – the composer’s second for the instrument – that Mutter plays in New Zealand.
Conversely, Mutter has introduced Williams to her audience, helping the composer bridge the gap between the classical and film music worlds that shouldn’t exist, but does. A highlight was Williams’ debut with the Vienna Philharmonic.
“That was a night to remember, even for him, who is used to being loved and feared and cherished,” Mutter says. “To perform with that orchestra in a hall like the Musikverein, where Brahms and Mahler gave premieres.”
The Williams/Mutter relationship is just the latest in a series of lasting musical bonds she has cemented throughout her career, often with similarly starry artists. Mutter has worked with the same pianist, Lambert Orkis, since the 1980s, for example, and for years was in a trio with cellist Mstislav Rostropovich (“a phenomenal musician”). She performed with and later married composer/conductor André Previn, through whom she met Williams. (“[Previn and Williams] were pals and knew each other pretty much from their start in Hollywood when they were young.”)
What does she look for in a collaborator? “I guess it’s a vivid dialogue between knowledge and instinct, because the arts thrive on those two pillars,” Mutter says. “But I’m always intrigued by brilliant minds. It can be a carpenter or someone who works with trees; it doesn’t have to be a musician. There are very few musicians in my circle of friends.”
Mutter didn’t come from a musical family, either, and perhaps as a result she followed an atypical route to stardom. Her parents loved music but they didn’t play. She won a few competitions as a kid but she didn’t enter the big, lucrative, reputation-making ones. Nor did she attend Juilliard or the Paris Conservatoire or any of the other elite music institutes. Instead, aged 9, she began studying at Winterthur in Switzerland, under Aïda Stucki, who had been a pupil of Carl Flesch. Stucki is significantly less known than her own teacher, but her impact was such that Mutter has named a scholarship for her.
Mutter left Winterthur at 16, having already accrued more professional engagements than she could handle. In part, that’s because at 13 she’d been discovered and championed by Herbert von Karajan. Karajan, the artistic director of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, was at the time the world’s most influential classical musician, and became a mentor to the young violinist. It wasn’t entirely smooth sailing.
When Mutter auditioned for the maestro, playing Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, Karajan sent her away, telling her to come back in a year, when her musicianship had matured. To people who didn’t know him – and many who did – he was a stern, forbidding presence. That’s not how Mutter remembers him.
“He was very shy,” she says. “He was slender, small, but he had a vision and you could tell when he entered a room. There was a presence, an inner fire. There was a passion and an immediacy and an urge to do it now, as if it were the last thing you’d ever do in your life, which was so thrilling for us musicians and also for an audience. “Something that was done basically written with your own blood. Where and when do you hear that kind of music making? He said that if you have reached all your goals, your aspirations were too low. That has been an example in my life.”
Mutter these days spends a lot of time and energy paying it forward, passing on the things she has learnt. The Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation supports exceptional young musicians, each of whom she selects.
She also tours with Mutter’s Virtuosi, a string orchestra comprising scholarship recipients. In New Zealand, she is giving a masterclass. The benefit to the up-and-coming players she helps is obvious. What does Mutter get from it?
“I have moments of great joy when I connect with young musicians who I can take out of their comfort zones, make them vulnerable, make them take risks and reach musical heights we wouldn’t reach without each other,” Mutter says.
“It reinforces that it’s worth living the life of a musician. That has become much more difficult but it’s worth it for these wonderful moments, because music is needed in the world.” l
NZSO: Music of John Williams with Anne-Sophie Mutter, Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington, November 17; Auckland Town Hall, November 18.
