Album review: Anne-Sophie Mutter, Dvorák (Deutsche Grammophon)

Anne-Sophie Mutter's first Dvorák programme features three shorter pieces accompanying a bravura performance of the Violin Concerto in A Minor whose opening “Allegro ma non troppo” illustrates the strengths of her technique and approach. The dramatic opening alternates bursts of declamatory orchestration with solo flourishes of thrilling intensity and fiery gypsy spirit, Mutter's piercing vibrato lending a will-o'-the-wisp quality to the passage, as notes seem to hang, trembling, in the air. Of the supporting pieces, “Mazurek” dances along dizzily, as in a dreamlike fantasia, while “Humoresque” is treated in initially tentative but increasingly impassioned manner, as if a memory captured on the very cusp of wistfulness.

Download: Violin Concerto in A Minor; Humoresque; Mazurek