‘A thousand butterflies’
“Florals? For spring? Groundbreaking!” Despite snippy Devil Wears Prada quotes, it really is. Anne-Sophie Mutter in a voluminous flowered dress celebrates her 50 years on stage, hacking away at the violin, as fresh as a daisy.
The programme is passionate, precise and wide-ranging. A bit for everyone, as we watch slack-jawed as such a petite, pointed woman makes such magnificent music from a chunk of wood and some string.
Let’s start at the end, shall we? Mutter has always worked with and featured the cinematic crossover composer John Williams, and tonight is no different. What we get is one of the most quintessential violin pieces, the theme from Schindler’s List. The teasing vibrato from Mutter, the way she holds the auditorium in her hand, the surprising speed and pace at which it begins, and the cracking, strained end. Shards of hearts are littered at our feet as we stand for thunderous applause.
The European premiere of Aftab Darvishi’s Likoo is another such one-off. Darvishi, in sombre but quietly sparkling black velvet, explains the impetus for the piece – “a thousand butterflies” – with Mutter adding “my vision of giving women in Iran a voice”. So we descend into a world of shrieking grief. Like a half-remembered folk song, this solo flutters into a cry, a sob, a lament, shaking Mutter’s beehive as she slogs away – a masterful use of suspense and pauses, needling long notes down into a well of shadowy pain.
Before and after these, it would be impossible not to include some André Previn, Mutter’s long-time collaborator and short-time husband. The Fifth Season (a playful reference to Vivaldi’s Four) is flighty and impressive, starting harder with pianist Lauma Skride – in even smaller florals – at times questioning and pointing, nibbling at the towering soloist, then softening into a bed of roses.
Fitting after Likoo, we get an insight into, as Mutter says, “a man who also lost his country” – Previn’s Piano Trio No. 1. A sweeping, angry Maximilian Hornung (sadly not a flower in sight on his dark suit) slices away at his cello. A string breaks with the exertion as the trio thunder through a chamber of displaced emotions, with always the threat of war lurking in the background.
The second act is Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Trio in B flat major, Op. 97, “Archduke” – a present for his patron Archduke Rudolph as he fled the advancing Napoleonic armies from his home of Vienna. The piano leads, demanding and playful, a delight for the gifted Archduke’s fingers and mind. The strings answer with polite little turns and swishes, creeping through a forest of bright shafts of light and dozens of glittering yellow primroses. Yes, undercurrents lurk – uncertainty and pain, mainly in the form of Hornung and his ever-troublesome instrument of doubt. The neat, satisfying and cumulative end arrives from around a tree as if it were the only possible outcome – a Beethoven turn if there ever was one.
Throughout, despite a celebration of a life dedicated to the stage, the stalking presence of death – the perpetual visitor – throws its cloak over the assembled crowd. Mutter never has, and still isn’t, shying away from the dark realities of the world, yet her work supporting and highlighting younger and diverse voices is surely our hope, weakly shining at the bottom of Pandora’s box.