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Rating: Some music should be mandatory in the educational program for building an emotional and conscious foundation, from a young age. Simple, sweet music that is a conversation, creating a completely concrete thread that never gets lost along the way. A sort of lesson on how to play with the building blocks of communication, how to fit and connect them to form a shimmering and ethereal castle, impregnable in its solidity. An imaginary school aimed at teaching love for Beauty, love for Humanity, for peace, harmony, and tolerance could not do without the Violin Concertos of Mozart, works of disarming joy and sincerity, capable of moving, entertaining, making us better. The very sound of the violin, standing out so clear and material, lends itself perfectly to becoming the voice of this vital impetus, of this sensation of immortal and incorruptible youth. And thinking of childhood automatically brings back into mind the noblest values of infancy: innocence, naivety, purity, the instinctive choice of Good, liveliness, optimism, and good humor.
With Mozart, children can become adults, and adults can become children again!
Among the five Violin Concertos, this extraordinary record features the third and fifth, perhaps the most beautiful along with the fourth. They are divided, as per the classical scheme, into the three traditional movements (Allegro, Adagio, Rondeau) and each lasts about half an hour. In a 1978 recording by Deutsche Grammophon, Herbert von Karajan conducts at the height of his powers the great Berliner Philharmoniker and a very young and splendid debutante, Anne-Sophie Mutter on violin. The cover is emblematic: the experienced Maestro and the 14-year-old prodigy are facing each other, their eyes at the same level, wielding the "weapons" of their respective expertise, the baton and the violin. Artists of equal rank, of equal level, the cover seems to suggest, despite the great difference in age and experience, brought together and united by the music of Mozart, which indeed makes Karajan smile like a child and Mutter serious and focused like a mature professional.
Mutter's interpretation is truly remarkable: no cherubs fluttering, no rhetoric, no overly ornate frills; and this alone would be uncommon in the history of interpretations of these concertos. But moreover, she manages to gift us with a dreamlike intonation across all registers, a beautiful timbre, confident and solid phrasing, and above all, she manages to convey to us intact the emotions the 19-year-old composer wished to express.
Karajan, for his part, enjoys and savors the pure (childlike) pleasure of taking a sweet ride through pleasant and sunny places, satisfying the simple desire (which we all have from time to time) to let our guard down, relax, and rejuvenate the spirit. The task before him is not hard, especially with such an orchestra, soloist, and scores, the music almost plays itself!
While these works by Mozart contain isolated moments of pensive melancholy, they do not present elements of murky spiritual corruption, nor dark despair; they merely represent passing clouds, vague languors, extemporaneous longings, quickly surpassed by that so-Mozartian momentum, by that Will to Live that takes back the reins of that somewhat unruly, somewhat whimsical horse, which is the dissatisfied wandering of our soul.
To have, to love, to live.
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