Rihm: Lichtes Spiel; Currier: Time Machines [CD]

Anne-Sophie Mutter belongs to a select group of virtuoso performers who have championed the creation of new music for their instrument. In this CD four of her recent commissions are presented in top-notch performances that convey both the approachable musical lines of the works as well as their underlying subtleties. The two orchestral works are scored for a 'Mozart' orchestra which ensures a natural balance between the forces. The short Penderecki work shows the double bass and violin soloists revelling in the interplay between their instruments, perhaps without probing any real musical depths. Incidentally a photograph in the liner notes shows the difference in size of the instruments -and their respective performers- that had caused the composer initial anxiety. Regrettably DGG has not included a biography of the Slovak double bass player Roman Patkolo, but we can look forward to hearing more from him. The other three works have a meditative or contemplative character. Rihm's Lichtes Spiel is a concerto in all but name and to my ears appeared to develop from Bartok, Szymanowski and Berg's seminal concertos from the 1920s and 30s. Sebastian Currier is perhaps not as well known outside the United States as the other composers but has a substantial body of orchestral and chamber works to his credit along with a Grawenmeyer award and the Rome Prize. His work has a melodic appeal and directness that belies the rhythmic complexities of the orchestral writing- it is a revision of the original commission that was regarded as too challenging for the orchestra.

These are works that are appealing at a number of levels and reveal new pleasures on repeated listening: it is likely that one or more will enter the classic performing repertoire.

Five INNOVATIVE Stars! Challenging, imaginative, innovative modernist classical music starring the 4-time Grammy-winning grand diva of classical violin, Anne-Sophie Mutter. "Motivated by the desire to keep on rediscovering the violin", she challenges herself through a program of modernist pieces which she commissioned from living composers and performs with a Mozart-ian sized New York Philharmonic, under musical director Alan Gilbert and featuring maestro MIchael Francis directing one work. In addition, there are 2 violin/bass violin duo pieces which feature Ms Mutter and the rising star of the contrabasso, Slokavian virtuoso Roman Patkoló. Anne-Sophie has transitioned thru the years from a hot young award-winning rising star; to a certified glittering multiple Grammy-winning virtuoso conquering all of the meaningful multi-period violin pieces in solo, chamber, and orchestral formats; to having works written for her; to an in-demand super star artist-in-residence for major conductors and orchestras. Now as one company is releasing a 40 CD box set of her great career ASM35 - Anne-Sophie Mutter - The Complete Musician and a 2 CD "career highlights" The Complete Musician - Highlights, she sidesteps talk of retirement and begins commissioning and performing/conducting her own challenging works by some of the leading living modernist composers, performed with great orchestras. A truly incredible career.

Wolfgang Rihm's "Lichtes Spiel: Ein Sommerstück"-(Light Game: A Summer Piece), with the Philharmonic under the baton of Michael Francis with concertmaster Glenn Dicterow, is a single 17-minute movement work that features Mutter's blazing bow work, sometimes double- and triple-stopped, often in the lovely altissimo register of her violin, framed against flowing orchestral backgrounds of suspended notes or staccato splashes that rise and fall in interesting supportive sonic textures. The work alternates between serene and stately, but building to intense power points in and around the 9 minute, 12, and 16 minute points: eschewing recurring themes, but instead giving off snippets of attractive nuanced phrases which tantalizingly flourish and fade along the way, like sunlight plays on a Summer day through breaks in the clouds. The jagged, intense, "Duo Concertante" is a 5-minute one-movement virtuosic work of wonder by one of Poland's greatest composers, triple Grammy-winning maestro Krzysztof Penderecki, featuring Mutter and Patkoló setting off arco and pizzicato fireworks over a 10-note motif and lyrical beauty over a 4-note lyrical motif with Mutter multi-stopped or with single string intensity, echoed by the flying fingers and bow of Patkolo. "Dyade" is also by Wolfgang Rihm: a 12-minute musical excursion and exploration of the "relationship" between the instruments and the players. The 7-movement "Time Machines" by Sebastian Currier features Anne-Sophie again with the Philharmonic and really does take 'time exploration' through a wide variety of sonic scenarios and emotions that run from a minute and a half up to 8 minutes in length, such as "Fragmented Time", "Time Delay", and the longest, "Harmonic Time". They go from reflective lyricism to dazzling pyrotechnics, with my favorites being "Overlapping Time", the truly weird "Backwards Time", the drama and urgency of the awesome "Entropic Time", and the frenetic velocity of "Compressed Time". This is challenging modernist 'avant garde-ish' classical music that is best listened to as separate powerful and beautiful works, which reveal more and more detail and beauty with each listen. A great legacy for future violinists to enjoy. Five CHALLENGING Stars. Highly Recommended. (4 Works: 10 Tracks; Time 63:50)

Stunning frocks aside, I have admired Anna Sophie Mutter's playing for quite some years now, and own several of her discs and a couple of DVDs. There is a direct vivacity to much of her playing that is instantly recognisable, and offhand I can think of no other classical violinist who has quite such an individual sound. However, with this disc, hearing her playing contemporary repertoire for the first time, I have come to a whole new appreciation of her capabilities. It has obliged me to realise that she is one of the great musicians of our age, whom familiarity has led me to take too much for granted. This repertoire, full as it is of subtle effects and sophisticated drama, shows that Anna Sophie is one of those handful of musicians who has transcended the limitation of her instrument; who can make it do anything that is physically possible, and somewhat more besides. If one fully enters the soundworlds created here, it becomes apparent that every note she plays is a complex musical event in its own right, with each nuance and articulation controlled to a micrometric degree of precision. In these performances I find myself as absorbed, if not more so, in the sculptural qualities of Anna Sophie's playing, as in the higher level organisation of the composers' intentions.

Rihm's Lichtes Spiel is a luminously beautiful, single-movement work, my guess is atonal but deeply lyrical nonetheless. The violin part unfolds against a backdrop of ambiguous and mysterious chords that for me evokes moonlight and shadows. I am reminded of Schoenberg's Verklarte Nacht, but entirely purged of its neurotic hysteria.

This is followed by two short pieces by Penderecki and Rihm respectively, both for a duo of Mutter's violin and the double bass of Roman Patkolo. Both have both instruments featuring as equals in a dynamical complex of narrative counterpoint. Again, I would guess that both pieces are atonal, but are neither difficult nor abrasive. In fact, there is a somewhat Bach-like clarity to the logical unfolding of both works. What really strikes me about both these works is that, devoid of tonal underpinnings, it really is up to the players to infuse them with their meanings, by means of their intonation and dynamical interplay, and in this respect one can feel here the intensely focussed intelligence of both players. One feels oneself to be in the presence of superb minds operating at optimal capacity.

The main course of the disc is the Time Machines of Sebastian Currier. Modernistic, but I don't think atonal because I can hear the pull towards a common tonal centre in each of its seven pieces. There is far too much in this work to go into any kind of detail. It is full of fireworks, unearthly beauty, sounds you have probably never heard a violin make before, excitement and humour. The spine chillingly ambiguous chords of the final piece are particularly haunting for me. This is a marvellously original but approachable piece of contemporary music.

I was so forcefully struck by Mutter's musicianship on this disc, that I found myself needing to hear more from her. So much so that I went on to order her double disc of Mozart: The Violin Concertos; Sinfonia concertante. Thi, in itself, is saying something, because normally I'm one of those who are passionate about Beethoven, but relatively lukewarm about Mozart. But then it's one of the curiosities of classical music that much of it we listen to out of love for the composers, but then some we listen to for the performer. Only rarely do we find these twin demands satisfied in a single package.