"Personal maturity and humility are vitally important in the face of
Beethoven's tragic character." That quotation opens the booklet included in DG's deluxe packaging of
Anne-Sophie Mutter's new recording of
Beethoven's Violin Concerto and violin Romances. The statement ironically illuminates the two fundamental flaws of
Mutter's performances: they are themselves neither mature nor humble. Is it humility that caused
Mutter to overload her performance of the concerto with incessant tempo rubato, deliberately twisting
Beethoven's classically shaped concerto into a series of disjunct and disparate gestures? Is it humility that caused
Mutter to burden her performances of the two Romances with a tone so lush and an interpretation so sensual that
Beethoven's coy little charmers become lascivious seductresses? And is it maturity that caused
Mutter -- arguably one of the greatest violinists of her generation -- to impose her interpretive will on
Beethoven, arguably one of the greatest composers who ever lived? For all the many beauties of
Mutter's performance -- and her performance is often drop-dead gorgeous -- her interpretation is so self-serving, so lacking in either maturity or humility, that one cannot recommend it except as an exercise in empty beauty.