"Let’s not forget: life is more important than a concert." - Anne-Sophie Mutter

hi I'm violinist annsofi mato you will watch now living the classical life and much more and a selfie thank you so much for being here on the show thank you for giving us your time during here you're very busy I hope you still will thank me after so one of the things that I've been very curious about in the world of performers is the subject of charisma and magnetism you were 13 when you first encountered Herbert von Karajan and he for me especially embodied a complete immersion in his craft but he exuded a charisma and magnetism that I can't imagine what it must have been like for you at 13 and then perhaps now in retrospect is that something that still stays with you and how did you regard that energy of his yeah yeah energy is precisely the point when I met him on the on December 11th 1976 in Berlin I of course had already known about him although I was very young because my first recording I bought from my pocket-money was broken ofor and since since then you know I love rock now and I'm a great admirer of of Korea but what struck me when I met him when he entered the room was that presence he was not a tall man I would say frail but you know there was something in him there's that there was this energy this command of the room which I think words kind of cannot really describe when he conducted and I was in the audience what you could sense was the inner tension in his body which was aligned with the Oh tension so he didn't just you know contact here his entire our body it was the body between his shoulder blades she could he literally molded the music and that I think that helped also particularly string players to follow these long span musical ideas which in the German Austrian repertoire so apparently also linked with the German language so yes charisma I mean he he was the embodiment of charisma and has stayed that way and some of the most interesting aspects of his personality had to do with change with curiosity with humbleness and with unstealable quest for yet another high point in a musical interpretation so after the most wonderful that Seabrook no seven you know the next morning he would he would just start from scratch again he would rehearse and only the string section in the string section only the violence only the viewers mind you these were golden times I feel like a dinosaur when there was still time invested in rehearsals and that is the reason why orchestras like Berlin Philharmonic and Vienna Philharmonic have developed a singular sound which is so clearly there as a real profile and you can only do that when you have chef conductor who takes the time to talk to the musicians to mold them to one instrument so at the end of the day you don't have to look at the conductor you don't even have to feel him which is an unavoidable if current is all said but the thing is that suddenly this these eighty Souls these 80 bodies these 80 musicians become one and that is just the most beautiful thing in music making that you are suddenly one instrument so if at that age you already encountered such an incredible musician as he was yeah was that rather intimidating or in fact the energy swept you up and brought you into your best element thirteen is an early age - such a yeah magnificent statute means they should particularly over forty years ago and where a thirteen-year-old girl was still very much a girl and I grew up at the foot of the Black Forest meadows and you know a forest around and sports and music had been my empty reading my great great passion I grew up with two older brothers so meeting carry on it was you know it was a little bit like meeting John Williams like this person from totally different seemingly from a different universe and it seemed to be so absolutely impossible to ever meet your great idol so now at age 56 or when I met John I was younger I'm meeting John Williams and you know I have these flashbacks to my meeting with carry on anyhow I was very intimidated by John Williams I was not intimidated by carrion because I was so young and so totally kind of hopeless when I flew to Berlin in order to audition for him because I was invited by him to audition otherwise I would have gone out of free will forget it so I was absolutely convinced he would of course sent me home and out of whatever strange reason he didn't send me home and out of that audition came thirteen years up till his death of collaboration no I wasn't intimidated honor on a human level because I was way too young and innocent and kind of you know I can only play as good as I came and if I would have been ten years older old boy I would have probably trembled you know and I still remember when we went on stage that wasn't the whitson festival in 77 playing Mozart's G major planning concerto so my first performance we have at home carry on and we were standing backstage in in the curtains and waiting to go onstage and he asked me are you nervous and I kind of shrugged and said no why the expression on his face was coming so if you've experienced that success or at least an early taste of the podium on a world stage and you've seen the trajectory of a long development career and you look at the world today with the musical industry changing the recording industry changing and the musicians search for a deeper meaning it's hard for me not to observe on social media and elsewhere musicians who seem to either desire to portray themselves in a certain way or the industry wishes to portray them in a certain way I'm thinking of photos that have to look almost like a model Instagram posts that look like a movie star lifestyle portraying a lifestyle rather than then music what do you make of these changes that you've seen during your time I think we are all on this planet for a purpose and I see my purpose as an artist to bring music forward to bring people together to touch people to leave with my interpretation of new music but also of repertoire we have lived with for centuries to leave a lasting memory but I think my life as a musician should also be alive where I try to be a useful member of human society that's why I do quite a bit of benefit concerts I have a foundation and I am on I'm on Instagram and I'm on Facebook I wouldn't say reluctant but I'm on my own pace I know I should do much more but it I have never been an artist who wanted to be seen as more than an artist I love my fans I love the fact that they are interested in Pender etske as much as they are interested in film themes which John Williams has rewritten for me but but there's a certain privacy I need time to study I need and when I want to share something with my fans like I'm asking for cheesecake recipe or I'm you know pointing out that one of my dogs is very very sick and if someone knows about lymphoma and tackles you know I'm very grateful for a response but I'm doing it on my own terms and I do believe that this is very important for a person who was living in the public eye but particularly as an artist this is important because I feel that I need time to reflect any time to study I need time to stay humble I need time to stay grounded stay with my children and be someone observing the world and taking part in it and trying to once again be a positive influence and for that I have to find the core of my being not in a certain lifestyle which maybe one would expect or whatever nevermind I don't care what is expected I just try to be a serious musician who is not blindfolded when it comes to social causes and these matters in your musical life did you always feel the space to just be authentic self or did you feel pressure to portray yourself in different ways in order to reach different opportunities the reason I asked I get the sense that musicians these days do feel a pressure to succeed right away and to portray themselves in a particular light that maybe has nothing to do with actually who they are or the musical content that they're trying to express your the way I grew up unless this this moment in my life when I was maybe 11 or 12 and my mother I just read the diaries of Anna Frank I pointed out that how much it meant to her generation that after the Second World War Judy menuhin came so fast back and he was the first Jewish musician coming back to Germany so I was aware that music is not there to serve me as a tool to become famous or rich or whatever but music had a purpose in society in music has a purpose in human history and then you know when I later worked together with mrs. Acosta Pavich who had given shelter to associate dean and tahaafe both famous writers who back then criticise the Soviet Union and had to go to labor camps and and then he was expelled as Lama was expelled with Galina his wife from Russia from the Soviet Union and that's not what it means to take responsibility and to to be an upright human being and what music can do and what a political force also music can have think of Shostakovich symphonies and how many you know political messages and how much he endured and so many others have endured in political systems who the artists you know when they didn't cater to the will of the dogmatic thinkers so in my world when I grew up there was just that kind of very purposeful view on music and we need to go back to that we need to see music not as a pastime you know the other thing I had a master classroom so I had a master class in Cincinnati and one of the four violinists who played the last one who played Shostakovich first Monica chatter first movement he is a violinist who comes from the LA sistema school and you could really tell and his playing that the violin for him was I wouldn't say an escape because music is not an escape from reality but it had a profound meaning it was not just a hobby something you do I could be a violinist but I could also be you know I don't know how II think for him it meant it has deep meaning at a deep emotional connection and that is what a musician has to find never mind if there is pressure from the industry there always has been pressure the question is how do you respond to it and one of the most important things I think in my foundation for me is to point out to young musicians that you need to have the breadth and and also the dedication to hang they are and we all can find in this huge garden of music eventually in each where we are needed as teachers as chamber music players some of us having music as a hobby not as a profession we need to stay realistic and before selling yourself you better be realistic why you want to be a musician well if we talk about this the musician's role in the world today and whether or not what we do is as you say an escape from reality well then we ask why are we musicians are we in fact existing in a bubble of sorts or do we really reach all people you can never reach all people I don't think that I don't think that I live in a bubble and true is that classical music has out of whatever strange reasons been put in an ivory tower and that has become exceedingly more prominent in the last decades it has to do with a lack of understanding of society that music is the glue which holds us together music is the glue in kindergarten which brings different songs of different cultural Heritage's and religions together when children still don't speak each other's languages they can sing their songs they can meet on this emotional ground playground of music they can through music learn to leave but also be part of a group we must understand that music is an essential part of being human behaving human it is life in a micro cosmos that that is why it is not acceptable that classical music is supposed to be there for the lucky few music is there for all the lucky few who first of all need to have a musical education in the school second of all we need more music being present in the media and third of all I think the role of myself for example is to look out for venues where I can reach an audience which feels it imitated by Carnegie Hall so I love to do club concerts I will do more open-air concerts and I just did my first proper open-air concert in Munich where I'm at home since a few decades and it was a wonderful experience actually at a given moment at the end of the cause I thought who do I want to go back into a normal concert hall yes of course I want because that that is it it's our sacrosanct meeting point where we can meet in silence total concentration and and forget you know the day's worries and just immerse ourselves into century-old musical messages which connect with us on an intellectual but most important on an emotional level as if they would have been written yesterday so we need to work on the fact that classical music needs to get out of the ivory tower needs to have different settings in which we perform music different classical repertoire where we can introduce this you know this wonderful gift from whoever at least from the composers to a lot more people as a performer I'm always curious to understand when the performers I admire artists being the in some cases highly sensitive people that they are how is it possible oh so we would hope so how is it possible from from night tonight huh to find the zone of this concentration what is it possible is it possible to find this consistency the the concentration for me I would consider the consistency the biggest challenge our night tonight yeah do you have any strategies or is this something that you even consciously think of or you're just you're just there with the music yeah I think there's a combination of all of that it seems that I have had since an early age a good way to focus I can in fact focus on something and just be at it probably it has also been training maybe it has to do that I'm rather stubborn person you know when I hang on to something I really hang on to it so that might also serve as a musician or just really focus I'm editing I love what I'm doing I immerse myself totally so being out of focus is out of the question yes of course they're evening's we're finding the focus seems to be more difficult and very often I can't even tell you why you know they might have been perfect perfect rehearsal I had the rest of the right kind of food of course no caffeine no sugar nothing heavy blahblah enough sports sleep on check check check and still I go onstage at 8:00 and I cannot find a sweet spot this golden moment where time people and music we are one you know that this kind of flow there is no recipe to it and I take great what would should I say Cobb got great comfort in the fact that even a great athlete like Roger Federer he cannot win Wimbledon every year it just is not possible he for sure prepares like you know Ivan but it's just we are humans so do I have a recipe no keep on trying and keep on memo keep on memorizing what you did only given evening when things went particularly well in order to learn if there is you know a relationship between your actions before the concert in the concert itself but let's not forget life is even more problem than concert I I remember concerts where when my daughter was a teenager we used to have wrong exciting conversations on the phone when I was gone which went on until 759 and then at 8 o'clock I needed to go on stage because the concert started anything like this I had to focus right away so I guess as a single mom of two children you do learn to focus this is absolutely astonishing because I can think for myself certain evenings where I'm so out of the zone that I in fact think can I actually walk out onto the stage have you really have you ever felt that way No consider yourself very lucky if you consider your relationship to the audience are you aware of your audience are you consciously part of their experience are you apart from them I know that the great Russian pianist sufferer Netsky always had to imagine barriers between himself and the audience other musicians Rubinstein had to feel the embrace of the audience but you get off the female so yes I do feel the audience and I need them to be there with me because I'm playing for them and one years of course I guess with the pianist it's the same although physically you are not so close to the instrument do you know one years on the instrument I'm hearing what it does and I'm adjusting but my other here is listening into the Hall not only for the acoustics but sensing the vibes are they with me can I do something how can I persuade them how can I bring them into the piece and it is a it is a very exciting it can be a very exciting relationship and it most of the time it's a very exciting relationship to have this voyage together this too governess definitely no barriers recently I performed a concert in America and someone was sitting in the first row holding a mobile phone up right into my face and that is of course I find that extremely disrespectful towards the orchestra the conductor and myself extremely disturbing for the music and because you know the concert hall is is the last place maybe Alban Church where we can just for once without any tools at hand just let it penetrate our let it get for our skin absorb it with all you are and not through a machine nothing is as beautiful as your memory no mobile in the world no photography no recording world can reproduce that why do you want to reproduce it isn't it most beautiful the first time the man of your life is telling you I love you how would that be if you have it on your iPhone would you listen to it every day it's just not the same thing you know some things are so beautiful like music is yes there are recordings under perfect circumstance where the sound comes close to what the artists want where their musical expressions even if it's a life recording ah what they want the audience to have as a preserved memory of them but other than that you know let's really keep these life moments sacrosanct and let's let's keep them personal here there is there a way to guard ourselves against these types of distractions I'm thinking of Alfred Brendel in the Lincoln century in the late 90s he was playing the first movement of Beethoven moonlight sonata and the audience was coughing like crazy and then he stopped he said ladies and gentlemen once you have stopped coughing I would resume playing so he walked off and he came back on and the point he returned to there was not a single sound quit mozz what did that once I think it was the beginning of with New York Philharmonic when he was chef here decades ago it was the beginning of time chain by REME which starts with two single notes in there in the violin in pianissimo and there was just no way I could start because people were not settled in and so Court took me by the entity stand off stage of cost you know the audience was kind of totally in shock and no announcement nothing few minutes later he didn't she didn't talk to the audience we walked back in and I think everybody got the message that silence is a part of music and we need you know to interact but the question becomes after such an interaction as that which is you know if itself already disturbing how do it possible to return to that level of concentration I can think of certain instances I as an audience member witnessed great performers who who stopped and spoke to the audience to behave a little bit better but afterwards they had a very very nervous not performance we did you feel on that instance that you were able to return I can see it on both sides because there was this wonderful festival for Sophia Berlin a few years ago in Germany and I was seated next to her and I had the most horrible cough attack in my life and then you I I know means I can cough now I'm sitting next to that I'm a musician I'm cygnets the composer I almost died so I dunno things like that could happen and yes there are moments when you know we are human enough that we need to cough question is how loud do you coffin you know all of that but yes I am NOT taking you know noises from the audience as an offense it just happens and when you gently remind the listener that hello you hear me I hear you let's just start in you usually I can let it go and just you know start afresh and hope for the better do you feel that there are certain personality traits that differentiate good musicians from the great ones what are the differences there if any is that something that's innate or say a characteristic of resilience it seems that you have an ability to bounce back and to just focus but really does it come down to only that no certainly not and then of course the question is what makes a great artist I think the arts in itself and the way we perceive an interpretation is very subjective and you know back in the days when foster watch was a life there were of constables for which fans and then there were you know soccer fans and one wouldn't go to the other and I have to confess I was a Warsaw huge fan I never went to the Shocker concerts which of course I am sure was a loss what I'm saying is and we can debate you know what a great musician is it it can come in in many forms in many interpretations some of them vary how should I say imaginative others more dogmatic there has an audience for many different styles of musicians so that is part of my answer that you know not all of us can please everybody and it's not that's not the point maybe resilience is part of it I I strongly believe in questioning yourself should be part of it but there are musicians who go about life and play pretty much the same since you know 20 30 years and they are happy with their life and the audience is happy with them the other day someone came after concert of mine and actually and accused me of not playing like on the recording he was he was very disappointed that my four seasons were much different from my recording in from 1999 I actually took it as a compliment he was offended so what can I say you know you can only try your best and I take great joy from my conversations with living composers because I learned so much about they are not insecurities but they are searched for the perfectly written line with the phrasing the orchestration and what I find as a kind of common ground' always is that they are always on the search always on and always dissatisfied always questioning themselves and that I think makes a great artist in general if it's a writer I paint on whatever now I know that you have started exploring more chamber music and collaborations one question of my younger colleagues is how to balance sticking with your own artistic convictions and feeling an idea strongly versus being open to the suggestions have your colleagues I think the more persuasive your ideas are the better you off basically and I think I can be rather persuasive musically speaking but I am very open-minded I think when it comes to like my collaboration with Lemper darkus we work now together since 32 years I think um you know just now we re rehearse the crisis another or was 23 24 we were discussing tempi and then of course we look at Gianni's tempi and the tempest we used to take and you know I'm always of the I told number today something and he asked me if you can use it as a teacher I told him I you know I don't want to repeat my mistakes I rather make new mistakes so what I say with that is because I have played Beethoven sonatas 20 years ago a certain way does by no means mean that there were good reasons for me that I have to repeat that so I'm rethinking you know The Tempest and then everything which comes with it so it's it's it's it's a constant I guess it's a constant flow at a constant version I've had a particular awareness of your traversal of Beethoven I guess since I was growing up and in in boarding school for for music and I remember there were there was the video series okay I remember my my colleagues at that time they were surprised at how personal whatever that means yes really nice work yeah what what does feedback like that yeah to you when you hear it I know that my playing is highly personal that's why I am a musician that's you know why I make music because when I talk to someone like goo'bye Julia and she explains me how she has she perceived interpose presence it was apparently this this gigantic ball of sound and then she sat down and she was trying to write down what she had hurt in that instant but much of it escaped her while she was writing it for some of the sounds she had in her inner ear there are no instruments and she told me it's like something deep froze what I write down is just a shadow of what I imagined just a shadow of what I've heard so now my craft is to bring these dots on the black lines back to life which means that I understand what a composer writes is just a road map but along the road there are trees there are flowers and it's on me to following the musical flow make sure that the journey is as personal to the listener as it was for the composer to write it down so then what do you make of performers today if I listen to them of course we have personalities we have individuals trifonov for example usually when you're tissue and then of course Martha Arkadiy it tsoukalos I think there are a lot of fabulous but then I go back to say speaking of violinists the old-world violinist Chrysler Jacque tebow these guys sounded so David I stuff for dr. toy start this out these guys sounded so different from each other if we could say that the difference is back then were larger what do you think accounted for this why the why the change I wonder whether that or not that's the expectations of the clinical precision of the recording industry and expectations there you know the funny thing is I just finished a book by Yosef Sogeti and which was published in 65 around 65 and he is commemorating about the fact that where there's a crisis in my name playing and funnily enough I think today is across this violin playing and it is we have lost a great number of wonderful teachers I mean in great performance like David also obviously Frank Uli to name a few and with losing these teachers who had a very personal and individual style of playing we have shifted to other schooling's which because they're basically I mean in America there's wonderful Juliet school has fabulous music school but imagine if everyone goes to the same teacher then did you know the stylistic differences get slightly I wouldn't say erased but they get more narrow and in Europe I don't know where we are to send the violin students to actually it's really very difficult so what we hear today in violin playing has to do with the lack in variation of violin teachers we have lost the French school the Belgian school the Russian school it all has mingled into something which is beautiful but not very distinctive let's put it that way what's your relationship with perfection one of my favorite stories to tell is Raphael kubalek was leading a rehearsal with the Vienna Philharmonic and at some point he suddenly stopped them and he said why do you all think that perfection is about accuracy please show me a different kind of perfection mm-hmm but I think being obsessive perfection whatever a person oint yes with whatever your own personal definition of perfection is yeah that could be an exhausting endless pursuit yeah Martha a great for example she once said that she has a hard time going on to stage because people feel like they expect however they feel Martha should sound yeah yeah I saw her recently with my son and it's true the expectation of her I have to admit are huge but she always exceeds that so but going back to to the understanding of perfection sometimes what I find in chamber music with colleagues of mine is the understanding that playing absolutely together is the goal but this is not true because friction and different viewpoints in a given moment in a musical score are important so perfection cannot mean that you are totally in sync perfection in itself as we know is the death because it's once you reach it then what so I wouldn't be too concerned about it really I mean I see what you are saying that we are aiming for a slick performance but that should obviously not be the goal because most important is really what an audience takes away from the evening the music a gesture your involvement your struggle meaning in Beethoven's music much of the of the aesthetic of the museum why we are so drawn to it and why it touches us so deeply is because he struggles and playing it is a struggle because it's technically so I wouldn't say badly written but two against the instrument think of the second movement of the trigger concerto for the pianist you know all these parallel runs it's very difficult yeah although it was as a training a peaceful yeah what I've asked you growth but but anyhow so the struggle momentum is important in music and I must rather see a musician on stage sweat and struggle and play wrong knows and there's excitement and I can see he's he's pulling all the stops he's just all in this is what the odds needs all in all the time I know that you're planning on taking some time off in 2021 what's that about and how do you plan for a musical career with longevity I don't know how do you plan life happens while you're making plans you know when I was young I was looking into the future and I thought oh my god when I'm 40 I probably need a role line you know and I'll be so old and will hardly be able to hold the bow up and turns out to be I can still walk without you know help so I'm planning longevity that's not the point I'm not planning that I'm very grateful for for the life I have obviously and I'm grateful for the projects I will work on for the next one or two years but I'm very aware of that this is a profession which is totally unforgiving and that they are will come a moment when I will not go on stage anymore and this is not something I'm looking forward to but it makes the now for me even more precious so not planning for the big future I'm having a sabbatical because I have always had in my life sabbatical sometimes it had to do with pregnancies in this case it doesn't have to do with pregnancy and I just need to step away from the speed of my life too many oversea flights not enough study time not enough time for life definitely here I can hardly remember all the last book I read was about order and really wonderful book by an American author and but you know knowing that there's not enough time to read or go to the cinema or see your family that that is alarming that is really very alarming and young people shouldn't go that far I will you know finish the Beethovenian 2020 and then that's it folks I'm gone for a while and finally what's inspiring you these days what do you reflect on in the rare free time Oh inspiring can be much a butterfly a mountain people the other day I did a benefit concert for children and women because since the world of the war broke out back then that's a few months ago 85,000 children have died either for bombs or illnesses or malnutrition and I was addressing for safe the children the audience and asking for it was in the handbook of the new Fela money for 10 euros per person and that two thousand eight hundred people in the hall and a few days later I got a donation over I don't know twenty five twenty eight thousand euros by a single couple because they felt so sad about what is happening in game and every single day and about all these innocent you know grown-ups and particularly children who have to die that they made this donation that is inspiring to me that shows me wow we can do things we can change the world and we have to change the world and we have to work together and this is my inspiration I want to know when I go from this earth that I have touched lives and I have maybe for a few people I was able to make their circumstance better Sophie thank you so much for joining us and thank you maybe the conversation about life which ignites to music great thank you so much thank you thank you for your time thank you [Music]

Channel: Living the Classical Life

Views: 80,377

Rating: 4.9075909 out of 5

Keywords: mutter, phone, classical, violin, living the classical life, zsolt bognar, interview

Id: Yf6O-WUI2jo

Length: 39min 50sec (2390 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 16 2019