Deutsche Grammophon's Simply Anne-Sophie is touted as "a unique collection of
Anne-Sophie Mutter's incomparable Deutsche Grammophon recordings," it is simply one of several -- Mutter Modern, Romance, and The Great Violin Concertos are among others Deutsche Grammophon has compiled from its extensive
Mutter holdings from over the years. Simply Anne-Sophie has a greater chronological range than its predecessors as its earliest entries date from 1992 recordings made for the hit disc Carmen-Fantaisie and stretches through to some selections from Mutter Mozart: Violin Concertos, recorded at Abbey Road in 2005. Some may wonder how long Deutsche Grammophon is going to be able to keep these reissues of
Mutter coming, but now it seems like the label is merely getting an early start, as
Mutter has announced that the touring season in 2007-2008 will be her last.
Simply Anne-Sophie looks like a project that has been on the back burner for a while; a paragraph of the notes and a couple of photographs are devoted to
Mutter's musical and marital relationship to conductor and composer
André Previn. The marital part of this union was quietly concluded in a divorce court in September 2006.
Mutter looks, as usual, like a million dollars on the front cover and sounds like another million on the inside. But the title is stupid -- there is nothing "simple" about
Anne-Sophie Mutter, who has stated on her website that she plays more benefit concerts than paying gigs because she "has committed herself to alleviating the medical and social problems of our times." Elsewhere she has said that she wishes that she "could wave a magic wand and have nuclear weapons and powerplants that threaten our planet disappear."
Mutter's bow IS a magic wand that can melt the hearts of an audience and change one's feeling about what it is to experience music. Whether she is able to achieve even part of her lofty vision for the world as a place for everyone to live is something we will probably not know until she's gone, but the sentiments, and her hard work to fulfill them, are admirable. It's a shame that Deutsche Grammophon couldn't reflect more of these interests in compiling Simply Anne-Sophie; they had to rely on the glamour babe with a serious side angle that they've always pursued. Admittedly, Simply Anne-Sophie would be a nice one for a total neophyte to
Mutter's work to find a way into her world, and if it brings one kid around to liking his/her violin a bit more, then it will have done more than its job.