Timing Is All-Important to Anne-Sophie Mutter

According to violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, everything is a matter of timing. Choosing the right concerto to play, constructing a recital tour, taking a sabbatical. Timing is a subject on which Mutter should be an expert, since timing and the Fates have been particularly beneficent to the 26-year-old classical music superstar.

The native of Rheinfelden, Germany, started playing the violin at age 5 and won her first competition at age 6. At 13, she was discovered by the late Herbert von Karajan, with whom she subsequently performed and recorded frequently. She has amassed a discography of 15 recordings, including the staples of the violin concert repertory, and has already made her debut with most of the world’s major orchestras. If she has accomplished in a few years what other aspiring performers only hope to do in a lifetime, Mutter cautiously keeps self-satisfaction at bay.

“Success is all relative, and a musician has to keep a cool head about himself and the development of a career. I force myself to keep a good balance between destructive self-criticism and maintaining the illusion that my music is something significant.”

This week, Mutter embarked on her third North American recital tour, which will bring her to San Diego’s Civic Theatre on Thursday night. She spoke from her hotel in Boston, where she was preparing Bartok’s Second Violin Concerto and the American premiere of Norbert-Eloi Moret’s “En Reve” with the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Thursday’s Civic Theatre performance will mark Mutter’s first recital appearance here, although she soloed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic on one of its Civic Theatre visits a couple of seasons ago. For her Thursday recital, Mutter has chosen all three Brahms Violin Sonatas.

“It’s not an easy program for the public. There’s no quick fix in Brahms. I thought an evening devoted to sonatas would make a serious statement.”

Mutter quickly added that the program is not easy for her and her accompanist, Lambert Orkis, either. When asked why she selected the serious all-Brahms program, she explained that she had brought more varied fare on her two previous U.S. recital tours and felt audiences were ready for heavier works.

“The first one was kind of popular, with well-known selections such as Beethoven’s ‘Spring’ Sonata and Tartini’s ‘Devil’s Trill’ Sonata. The second was a little more daring and more exciting for me. It included the Debussy Sonata and Witold Lutoslawski’s Partita.”

Mutter’s advocacy of music by contemporary composers such as Lutoslawski is unapologetic. She sees it as her duty as a musician to bring new music to the public’s attention.

“It’s important for the public to get to know something besides the standard repertory. Even if an audience doesn’t enjoy all of a contemporary work, if the music has a strong emotional content--which the Lutoslawski clearly has--there are little islands which they can enjoy even on a first hearing.”

When pressed on details concerning her planned sabbatical from performing, Mutter explained that it would be just an eight-month hiatus at the end of the 1991-92 concert season.

“I decided to take that sabbatical period off five years ago. After 14 years of concentrating on concerts and learning new works, it seemed the right time. I wanted to avoid getting too one-sided as a human being. So I simply put it into my schedule.”

The sabbatical will give her time to “enjoy a normal life and read books.” She will not, of course, put down her violin, but will use the time to learn new repertory, especially pieces that have been written and dedicated to her.

She will also have more time to spend with her husband of two years, Munich corporate lawyer Detlef Wunderlich, whose passion is skiing. But she is not planning to take up the sport.

“Maybe it’s just laziness,” she said coyly. “Besides, it’s much too dangerous.”

Talmi on celeste. San Diego Symphony music director Yoav Talmi will reveal another side of his musical personality next week when he joins several orchestra musicians in the Mozart Prelude Concerts at Copley Symphony Hall (Feb. 21-24). Talmi will make his debut on the celeste in a pair of Mozart works originally written for the now-obsolete glass armonica.

“I think it’s important both for the players of the orchestra as well as for the public to see the orchestra’s music director collaborate with orchestra members in performance. It adds collegial feelings when I play with members of the orchestra,” Talmi explained.

Symphony on disc. Music director Yoav Talmi has announced the repertory for the symphony’s second classical recording, an all-Brahms disc to be recorded in January, 1992. (The orchestra’s first disc with Pro Arte, the complete Third Symphony of Reinhold Gliere, will be made this May.) In his search for unusual repertory--the local orchestra is not quite ready to compete with the plethora of Brahms Symphony recordings on the market--Talmi has selected three unusual Brahms transcriptions. The symphony will play Dvorak’s transcription of “Five Hungarian Dances,” Talmi’s own transcription of the B-flat String Sextet, Op. 18, for string orchestra, and Erich Leinsdorf’s orchestral transcription of the “Four Serious Songs” for either bass-baritone or mezzo.

Singers on parade. To mark the unlikely combination of black history month and Mozart’s bicentennial, soprano Debra McLaren and mezzo Martha Jane Weaver will give a duo recital Sunday at 4 p.m. in the sanctuary of La Jolla’s St. James Episcopal Church. The two singers will join in duets from Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro” and “Cosi Fan Tutte.” Weaver will sing the song cycle “Four Songs by Langston Hughes” by Jean Berger, and McLaren will perform traditional spirituals. The program is part of West Coast Lyric Opera’s regular recital series of promising local singers.