MUSIC REVIEW : Thoughtful Recital From German Violinist Mutter

There’s no mistaking Anne-Sophie Mutter for an older musician.

The 31-year-old German violinist, heard in recital Wednesday night at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, is serious, thoughtful, technically accomplished and hard-working--almost as if she still has something to prove.

These are all wonderful qualities for a soloist to have. But occasionally one wanted her to lighten up, take it easy, toss off a phrase and make room for spontaneity. Her purpose and devotion was admirable, and also a bit relentless. She’s not jaded, that’s for sure.

Her playing of Stravinsky’s Suite from “Pulcinella” certainly seemed overdone, although perhaps not altogether detrimentally so. This is an often acerbic and dry, neoclassical adaptation of tunes by Pergolesi and other lesser-known Italian baroque composers, but Mutter played it as if it were Brahms.

She appears to have learned something from the period-instrument crowd, i.e. the expressive use of non-vibrato playing, and effectively extends its use to music old and new. She tellingly set apart a little half-step motif in the first movement of Beethoven’s Sonata No. 10, for instance, the non-vibrato sound turning it into a repeated, singular moan.

*

With pianist Lambert Orkis, her assured and sensitive accompanist, she captured the wind-blown, fervent whisper quality of Schumann’s Sonata No. 2, sculpting her phrases with that ever-resourceful vibrato, quick swells and varied note pressure--as an early Romantic jazz musician, so to speak.

In its local premiere, Sebastian Currier’s 1993 “Aftersong”--written for and dedicated to Mutter--gave the violinist ample opportunity for intense virtuosity and lyrical flights in itsrhythmic, gear-shifting first movement and songful second. Drawing on Bartokian and Stravinskian precedents, it seemed pretty generic stuff in the cold light of 1995, but the audience received it enthusiastically.

There were three encores: Brahms’ Hungarian Dances Nos. 2 and 5 (played with gooey verve) and a hushed “Beau soir” by Debussy.