Motes & Theories

The Wikipedia entry has been edited by apparently twenty separate individuals over the last eighteen months, with no apparent controversy (there is no discussion page at all), and the gradual accretion of images, facts, and a few corrections.

It runs as follows:

Anne-Sophie Mutter (born June 29, 1963) is a German violinist.

Born in Rheinfelden in Baden, Germany, she started playing the piano at age five. Shortly thereafter, she began playing the violin, studying with Erna Honigberger and Aida Stucki.

After winning several prizes, she was exempted from school to dedicate herself to her art. When she was 13, conductor Herbert von Karajan invited her to play with the Berlin Philharmonic. In 1977, she made her debut at the Salzburg Festival and with the English Chamber Orchestra under Daniel Barenboim.

At 15, Mutter made her first recording of the Mozart Third and Fifth Violin Concertos with von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic. The same year, she was named Artist of the Year.

In 1980, she made her American debut with the New York Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta. In 1985, at the age of 22, she was made an honorary fellow of the Royal Academy of Music (London) and head of its faculty of international violin studies. In 1988, she made a grand tour of Canada and the United States, playing for the first time at Carnegie Hall. In 1998 she played and recorded for CD and DVD the complete set of Beethoven's Violin Sonatas, accompanied by Lambert Orkis; these were broadcast on television in many countries.

Though her repertoire includes many classical works, Mutter is particularly known for her performances of modern music. A number of pieces have been especially written for or dedicated to her, including Witold Lutoslawski's Partita, Krzysztof Penderecki's Second Violin Concerto and Wolfgang Rihm's Gesungene Zeit ("Time Chant"). She has received various prizes, including several Grammys. She also owns two Stradivarius violins (The Emiliani of 1703, and the Lord Dunn-Raven of 1710).

She is married to the pianist and conductor André Previn.

The Everything2 entry, written by Gritchka, is as follows:

A German violinist with a warm, passionate, but precise tone.

Born on 29 June 1963 in Rheinfelden, she took up learning the violin at the age of five, and at the age of six won first prize in the Jugend Musiziert (Young Musician) competition, the youngest ever winner. She also won a prize as a pianist; then she won the same prizes in 1974, and was asked if she'd mind awfully not entering again. Her tutors included Henryk Szeryng.

She was taken up as a protégée (and of course prodigy) by Karajan in 1976. She made her Salzburg and London débuts the following year.

In new music, she is especially associated with the composer Witold Lutoslawski. Recently she has regularly paired with the pianist Lambert Orkis for many recitals and recordings of modern music, in a project called "Back to the Future".

She is quite a gift to a record producer, being stunningly beautiful, but unlike some whose name mae not be mentioned, she is one of the most solidly talented of all violinists around, and the business with the dark flowing dresses and bare arms is just a bonus for the viewers. From watching her perform, I would say she gets quite as excited by the music as we her audience do.

Mutter is reticent about her private life; I believe her husband Dr Detlef Wunderlich died in a car crash, leaving her with a young child. (News! On or about 1 August 2002 she married the ageing conductor André Previn in a secret ceremony in Germany; his fifth marriage, the lucky swine.) She is a guest teacher at the Royal Academy of Music in London.

"Ten years from now, thirty years from now, I want more or less to be doing the same thing. Just better."

Updated 18 August 2001 to the spiky strains of the Prokofiev sonata in D major

This entry has no references, other than internal links to term-related stories, although many pages do include them. It's hard to assess the factual value of the piece, a common complaint about the Wikipedia. Wikipedia entries can be judged by the amount of behind-the-scenes activity and the quality of the meta-debate on the discussion page. On Everything2, you take your chances. It's often amusing writing, at least.