Anne-Sophie Mutter: "I am naturally lazy by nature"

When she plays, the angels in heaven set aside her harps, some say, others call her the Devil's Violinist. In the Munich "Hotel Palace" sits Anne-Sophie mother, 45, but extremely earthly at breakfast with a girlfriend. When she is later photographed in an Art Nouveau armchair in a hotel room, she only looks at the floor for a long time, laughing loudly the next moment. "I feel like I'm on a throne," she says. A throne is not her, a mountain summit earlier. She has a warm, sparkling with life. Only questions about her private life would make her "hot," she announces. Similar to over 30 years ago, when the girl from the Baden town of Wehr, Karajan the "violin miracle" explained, the reporters unequivocally made it clear, she "nüt zu verzella", but like to play a piece on her violin to the best.

Anne Sophie Mutter likes to quote John Lennon

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: You are not only the world's best violin virtuoso, but also mother. But the star violinist at the parents' evening of her children - I can not imagine that.

Anne-Sophie Mutter: Oh sure, now and then. When it comes to such important issues as "What do I smear my child on lunch break". But I do not tear it, I prefer to go directly to the teacher in the office hours.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: Often you are probably out anyway. Planned over the years. Do you already know today what you will play in Tokyo in 2012?

Anne-Sophie Mutter: Yes, in 2013 I already have concert dates. But such a predictable life also has advantages. Because I can consider especially important periods in life with my children early. For example, I never miss big family gatherings. But unfortunately sometimes short-term appointments such as a dance event my daughter. But the way it is, our lives are pretty normal for my kids and me.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: You like to quote John Lennon, who once said, "Life happens while I make plans." Are you afraid of missing something?

Anne-Sophie Mutter: I'm not scared, but the sentence includes both: coincidence and planning. Only a little is really plannable. But planning is absolutely necessary to shape goals. Without working towards goals, I could not live. Without the many surprising moments of my life, however, I would not be a complete person and not able to react spontaneously on stage. When playing comes the inspiration of the moment.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: But in a well-organized life like yours, does not one have to plan for coincidences?

Anne-Sophie Mutter: Chance happens, you can not plan it. Like encounters with composers, through which I progress artistically. Also my private encounters, my first husband Detlef Wunderlich, my children - always by chance. Or are children planned?

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: My not ...

Anne-Sophie Mutter: Mine, too. After all, they are always a godsend.

Anne-Sophie Mutter: "Alone I am rare"

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: Are you not sorry if you are not home and able to comfort when your children are coming from school with bad grades?

Anne-Sophie Mutter: You do not come home with bad grades, everything in the green area. Going away from home and performing concerts is always difficult, of course. I hoped that teenage children would need their mother less. My daughter is now 17, my son 14 - and the opposite is the case. The more demanding and complex the life of a young person is, the more important are the conversations. I travel to America and the Far East once or twice a year for two weeks. Then I'm back home for months. For the European tours it is convenient that I live in the middle of Europe and either fly back with the first plane after the concert or just come by car at night, the three, four or five hours back to Munich.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: Still sounds like nomadic life and lonely hours ...

Anne-Sophie Mutter: I am glad that my children traveled with me often and got to know large parts of the world at an early age. They are therefore very cosmopolitan and grew up with a great respect for other cultures. We have friends all over the world. A kind of extra-familial family. Alone I am rare. Even not now, where my children travel only rarely. My musician colleagues, with whom I'm on stage, become friends, and I enjoy traveling with friends. Believe me, I'm happy with the life I chose at the age of six.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: Unbelievable, you already knew exactly what you wanted to do in life during the enrollment?

Anne-Sophie Mutter: I knew I wanted to be a violinist.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: Soloist even. Was it really your own wish?

Anne-Sophie Mutter: Yes, my parents did not press me. I am the first musician in my family. But my brothers and I grew up in a very musical environment. With regular sound of classical music and jazz. That probably touched a string - with ai - in me, so that I wanted my violin lessons for my fifth birthday - and got it half a year later.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: You should have taken your violin even in the evening to bed.

Anne-Sophie Mutter: Well, for a while she lay in the violin case next to the bed.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: Your music is considered impetuous and urgent. Are you similar to her?

Anne-Sophie Mutter: I am not my music, but I try to slip under the composer's skin and make a musical statement out of five lines on the paper. But I am a very passionate person. These include impatience and speed. Passion can also be very quiet and very gentle.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: Her play in the concerto "In tempus praesens", which Sofia Gubaidulina has written for you, is very intimate.

Anne-Sophie Mutter: It has something to do with her political past. Ms. Gubaidulina was one of the forbidden composers of the Soviet Union, was not allowed to leave the country for decades and was not performed. I admire her music deeply, because she creates this symbiosis between form and emotion. Like any great composer, the composer tries to find a musical language that is unique. This is often technically difficult to implement on the violin. But I love challenges. Maybe this is related to my mountaineering nature. I used to like to go to the mountains often.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: Not anymore?

Anne-Sophie Mutter: My children are not enthusiastic mountaineers, unfortunately. They play tennis, dance, jog. That's why my sports activities have changed more towards running.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: And who will run away from it?

Anne-Sophie Mutter: I'm running away from my children or they're running after me and me. But whether jogging or mountaineering or music making - the challenge of the new and unknown has always fascinated me.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: The attraction is one thing, stick to one thing, learn something and practice the other. "Art is beautiful, but it does a lot of work," said Karl Valentin.

Anne-Sophie Mutter: Passion makes everything possible. I also see that with my son. He could, if I did not drag him off the tennis court, play tennis all day. Same with dancing my daughter. I can understand that very well, because I know how wonderful it feels to spend time with his great passion and completely lose yourself in this passion.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: A passion that requires a lot of discipline.

Anne-Sophie Mutter: And dedication and effort. But if you are interested in something, then effort and effort are by-products. In music, I have never considered practicing hard.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: But does one have to be very organized and structured in order to be able to reconcile family and concert business as a single mother?

Anne-Sophie Mutter: I'm naturally lazy by nature. But my life moves between the two poles of an extremely big burden and the great pleasure of doing nothing at all. Or at least the desire to cherish, nothing to do.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: Doing nothing is not so easy?

Anne-Sophie Mutter: "Children are the only important thing in life"

Anne-Sophie Mutter: But I always take it very seriously. Sabbatical every ten years, six months this year. I love to look at my life from a bird's-eye view and think about whether the current planning is what I want or if I have to change something about it. Because I do not want to be a slave to my plans, because sooner or later this will not only lead to artistic bondage, but also to unproductiveness.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: So you do not feel trapped in your plans?

Anne-Sophie Mutter: Not at all, I am absolutely trapped in this illusion that I am a free person ...

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: ... who creates his freedom in a disciplined way.

Anne-Sophie Mutter: Yes, yes, I hope so! (She laughs loudly.)

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: Does that mean you are canceling a concert because the daughter has runny nose?

Anne-Sophie Mutter: Because of cold, less, but with fever it looks different again.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: "Music is a drug - children are life" - that's a quote from you.

Anne-Sophie Mutter: My God, that sounds very unhealthy now. But I think everything you do with great enthusiasm carries with it addiction.That's why it's great to have something different to your own dreams. Children who are the only important thing in life, what it takes to fight. And that's why they are my life, and the music is an added plus. My world view has completely changed, and I believe that through my children I have become a usable person.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: What do you mean, please?

Anne-Sophie Mutter: To protect children and to put them on a path that opens the world to them and makes them open to the world, is an exciting and insanely strenuous, but very meaningful life task. With children you learn that we are part of an eternal cycle. Recognizing that has helped me a lot with the tragedy of my first husband's early death. Now I see my son, who has a tremendous resemblance to his father, and I see his life going on in him.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: Did the music console you then?

Anne-Sophie Mutter: I played a charity concert for a church, and it became a service for my husband. I gave my word to the church - how could I have canceled? Music is a wonderful language that bridges many things: in the one who makes music, but also in the one who listens.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: What does everyday life look like in the Mutter-Haus in Munich?

Anne-Sophie Mutter: No two days are alike, but unfortunately everyone starts getting up early, which I never liked, but which I have got used to in the meantime. I'm also very happy that I can practice undisturbed in the morning.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: And lunch is cooked?

Anne-Sophie Mutter: I mostly cook only on weekends. Actually, I like to cook, I also like to shop. Then I have three things on my list and come home at 30 because they look so fabulous. I remember one and a half kilos of wild chanterelles that I peeled for one, two, three hours. The heap of garbage got bigger and the rest stayed the same size.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: Is not it enough to clean her?

Anne-Sophie Mutter: You can brush something, but you have to peel it, especially the stalk. The mushrooms tasted great ...

Anne-Sophie Mutter: "I seldom hear music"

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: And how do you relax outside the kitchen?

Anne-Sophie Mutter: With all possibilities. Sport, hanging around, walking in the city, going to the cinema. When I'm alone, hiking in the mountains, reading on the sofa or gardening. I am a passionate implanter. The plants then have to grow themselves. English roses, I love them.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: Do you listen to music?

Anne-Sophie Mutter: Very rare. Actually only on trips, especially because of my fear of flying. Then I mostly listen to jazz, put my iPod plug in my ear and hear everything from Madeleine Peyroux to Ella Fitzgerald.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: What is changing with the aging? Do you need more leeway because you develop your own ideas and wishes?

Anne-Sophie Mutter: I think I already have enough ideas of my own and I know pretty well what I want. More of that would probably be absolutely unbearable for the people around me.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: You once said that you want to stop at 45. That would have been last year.

Anne-Sophie Mutter: I do not want to tie that in one day. It is a philosophical leitmotiv in my life to do something out of habit. If at some point my artistic demands can no longer be realized, then I will do something else without much notice. Peeling chanterelles or maybe just brushing ...

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: plant roses ...

Anne-Sophie Mutter: I think every life is a work in progress, a constant learning. I have wonderful friends like my teacher Aida Stukki, from whom I learned early on that the content of life also exists in exchange with other people. Not only: Today I play here, tomorrow in Paris. Music is a language that brings people together and makes change possible. Social changes. I teach in my foundation, which promotes young children all over the world, or play a charity concert to use the proceeds to set up an orphanage in Romania for 30 girls who would otherwise end up in prostitution.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: What have you planned for your free half year?

Anne-Sophie Mutter: Tidying up. My cabinets and those of my children, I definitely need a quarter of a year. And then travel. My brother has a birthday. I want to seduce him and my children to travel with me to Peru.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: Because you've been around the world, but never in Peru?

Anne-Sophie Mutter: Exactly, and because Peru is a youthful dream of mine. On the Machu Picchu - very high. And maybe even stay up there.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-woman.de: Any other wishes and dreams?

Anne-Sophie Mutter: Yes, but I will not tell you. A piece of chocolate cake makes me happy.

Anne-Sophie mother

Anne-Sophie Mutter was born in 1963 in Rheinfelden, Baden. Herbert von Karajan called her a "miracle" when she played him at the age of 13, and hired her as a violin soloist for the Salzburg Festival in 1977. The first record with the Berliner Philharmoniker, Mozart's "Violin Concertos No. 3 and No. 5" , was a sensational success. Soon she performed all over Europe, in the US and in Japan. Anne-Sophie Mutter is involved in charity concerts for aid projects in Romania as well as for the promotion of young strings. She was first married to lawyer Detlef Wunderlich, who died of cancer in 1995. She separated from her second husband, the American conductor, composer and jazz pianist André Previn, two years ago. She lives in Munich with her children, Arabella-Sophie, 17, and Richard, 14. Anne-Sophie Mutter's "Mendelssohn-Projekt" has just been published, with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig she interprets u. a. his Violin Concerto in E minor from 1845.

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