HER INFINITE VARIETY

Violinist Viktoria Mullova talks to Toby Deller about her eclectic musical collaborations, mastering the art of improvisation, experimenting with technique, and her new Schubert recording with pianist Alasdair Beatson

Schubert’s music is particularly poignant because it sounds like it is trying to reassure us that everything is going to be OK, without quite hiding the likelihood that it won’t. That, anyway, is how I put it to Viktoria Mullova, whose latest recording is dedicated to the composer. ‘I think it’s up to the listener to find out for themselves how it speaks to them,’ she gently rebuffs, as we discuss the composer in the calm surroundings of her London home when we met in January 2022. ‘For you it’s like that; for some people, it’s probably different.’

Comprising the Fantasie in C major D934, the A major Violin Sonata D574 and the B minor Rondo D895, it is the second album she has made with pianist Alasdair Beatson, following a selection of three Beethoven sonatas, and her first on the Signum label. But it is not her first Schubert recording. She tackled the Octet on a 2005 release with her group the Mullova Ensemble, and she included the Fantasie alongside Clara Schumann, Stravinsky and Ravel on a 2006 album with Katia Labèque. This time, however, she is playing on gut strings and with a fortepiano. But the passing years and the new set-up have not changed her appreciation for the music. ‘Schubert is one of my favourite composers,’ she says. ‘I love the intimacy of his music, its melancholy and sadness with a smile.’

Her fondness for its introversion and delicate moments is reflected in her creative inspirations away from music. When I enquire about these, she quickly reaches across the table for a decorative item that turns out to be a piece of bark, its texture and curvature making it a natural found object. She gestures towards a small posy of wild flowers she has arranged in a vase – another source of inspiration. ‘I love creating beautiful things in the house, in the garden. I very often look around for creative ideas, whether it’s nature or something I admire and which gives me inspiration.’

Had we met several weeks later, thus after Putin’s armed forces had invaded Ukraine, the atmosphere would surely have been less calm. Mullova is three-quarters Ukrainian (though she was born in Moscow) and famously defected from the Soviet Union in 1983. ‘It’s so painful for me to see what’s happening to the people and the land of Ukraine,’ she told me at a later date, ‘and to see the ignorance of the Russians who are supporting a dictator.’

She did speak, however, with a mixture of delight and pride at the eclectic musical tastes and interests shared by her family. One daughter, Nadia Mullova-Barley, is a dancer with The Royal Ballet; her elder daughter, Katia Mullova-Brind, is a DJ in Berlin. Meanwhile, her son, Misha Mullov-Abbado, is a well-established jazz double bassist with whom she made the 2020 album Music We Love, a collection of songs and arrangements, both classical and non-classical, with which they have a personal connection.

‘SCHUBERT IS ONE OF MY FAVOURTE COMPOSERS. I LOVE THE INTIMACY OF HIS MUSIC, ITS SADNESS WITH A SMILE’

Mullova’s Schubert recital adds to a discography that stretches back over more than 35 years. While the mainstream 20th-century concertos – Sibelius, Shostakovich, Bartók, Prokofiev – are one area of focus, she also has a strong interest in Baroque and Classical repertoire played with specialists in those areas. And in lieu of recording many new commissions or any classical ensemble chamber music other than the Schubert Octet, there are non-classical collaborations dating back to her album Through the Looking Glass. Released in 2000, it comprises music by artists such as Miles Davis, Joe Zawinul and Jaco Pastorius of Weather Report, the Bee Gees, Alanis Morissette and Youssou N’Dour.

‘I would get bored if I were to play only classical repertoire, like for example the Brahms and Tchaikovsky concertos,’ she says. ‘Nothing against Brahms! In fact, I was looking at my home videos recently and saw myself rehearsing Brahms sonatas, and suddenly I really craved starting to play them again. I haven’t played them since I recorded them with Piotr Anderszewski in 1995. But I like the variety in music, whether I am listening to it or playing. In the early 90s, I immersed myself in Baroque music, and since then I’ve met and worked with many wonderful musicians who have helped me to understand this new language of music making.’

She even acquired a second instrument for Baroque and Classical repertoire –a 1750 Guadagnini to go with the 1723 ‘Jules Falk’ Stradivari she already owned – to make switching between set-ups more manageable. Having the second violin meant she could experiment with programmes involving both instruments. ‘I started to build programmes of solo Bach together with contemporary music, with two instruments on stage. That was interesting, but very hard, both physically and because it’s a different technique and feel –a different pitch also. I think it was interesting for the audience to see and hear two different instruments, two different sets of strings, two completely different sounds.’

Mullova recorded an album, Music We Love, with her double bassist son, Misha

AGA TOMASZEK

Mullova makes no secret of the influence her collaborations have had in determining the artistic direction of her career, even if she has not generally set out to engineer them. ‘I feel like a sponge, attracting these really great musicians to work with, and it’s a very rewarding and satisfying feeling. I never make big plans for music projects in advance. I kind of go with the flow and find myself working with incredible musicians like Ottavio Dantone [keyboardist and conductor of Accademia Bizantina], Giovanni Antonini [co-founder of Il Giardino Armonico], Alasdair Beatson and many others.’

She first met Dantone by chance while rehearsing with Il Giardino Armonico in Milan. ‘I took the opportunity to ask him whether he could write a cadenza for the Beethoven Concerto, which I was planning to record with John Eliot Gardiner and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. I admired his recordings so much and also knew that he was a very good improviser. He agreed and I received the pages of the Beethoven cadenza by fax a few weeks later.’ She went on to make two recordings of Bach with Dantone himself, the first in 2007. ‘I learnt so much from him, it was just overwhelming.

‘I BUILT PROGRAMMES OF SOLO BACH AND CONTEMPORARY MUSIC, WITH TWO INSTRUMENTS ON STAGE. THAT WAS INTERESTING, BUT VERY HARD PHYSICALLY’

I remember I went to Italy to work with him on the Bach violin and harpsichord sonatas and it was the most inspiring time for me in terms of learning and a new understanding of how to play Bach.’ She added the concertos with Accademia Bizantina a few years later, in 2012.

Witnessing Dantone’s skill and insights as an improviser came at a timely moment for Mullova, since she had already started to incorporate improvisation in her work. ‘He was telling me, when we were talking about it, that improvising is like doing your homework. You have to practise; you can’t just start improvising. We have to practise whatever we try to learn. And then you start to get more free.’

In fact, her first experiences of improvisation came from the musicians who had played with her on Through the Looking Glass, such as the eminent British jazz pianist Julian Joseph. ‘It’s the hardest thing to do, being classically trained – to go away from the written notes. And Julian was so encouraging Matthew Barley and kind. We had lots of fun doing that project, touring it in many countries.’ Her fluency had increased significantly by the time of her album of Brazilian songs Stradivarius in Rio – released in 2014, the culmination of several years’ work. ‘Another thing I learnt is that non-improvisers think improvising is very hard because they think they have to play a lot of notes,’ she says, before inadvertently echoing the message of the famous song One Note Samba (by Antônio Carlos Jobim and Newton Mendonça), which is not on the album: ‘But improvising starts with just one note. You play one, then repeat it again, then maybe join another note and so on.’

Mullova and her husband, the cellist

Alongside her on both those recordings – as well as on a third, entitled The Peasant Girl (2011), which puts the Kodály Duo op.7 for violin and cello alongside jazz numbers with a similar gypsy influence – is her husband Matthew Barley. The British cellist, known for his own musical cross-collaborations, made various arrangements for the projects and is the producer on her new Schubert disc, among others. They met in the late 1990s, and it was largely through him, she says, that she began working in non-classical idioms.

‘MATTHEW AND I TRIED PUTTING TWO DIFFERENT SARABANDES TOGETHER AT HOME. AT FIRST I THOUGHT IT WAS A CRAZY IDEA, BUT THE MORE WE PLAYED, THE MORE BEAUTIFUL THEY SOUNDED’

‘At that time it was all so new to me. I remember he was kind of helping me, saying things like,“Don’t play with too clean a sound,” or he would work on rhythm. Now he doesn’t have to because it’s so much in my system and because I play this music so much. I have lots of friends who play jazz, and I am surrounded by this kind of music. Slowly I learnt the styles – it’s like with Baroque music: you learn the style, you learn the new language.’ In fact, the pair in tandem are presenting a week-long masterclass in string playing at the Stauffer Center for Strings in Cremona at the end of March into April –a course that covers the interrelated subjects of interpretation, improvisation, communication, programming and so on, informed by their joint expertise in these areas.

A recent musical experiment at the Wimbledon International Music Festival in 2021 shows no let-up in their curiosity and openness to creative ideas. ‘We were having dinner once with Jiří Kylián, who is a wonderful choreographer and a very creative person,’ recalls Mullova, ‘and he asked: have you ever tried playing two Bach sarabandes together? At first I thought it was quite a crazy idea, but Matthew and I decided to try it at home. So he played the D minor Sarabande from the Cello Suite and I did the Sarabande from the D minor Partita. First it sounded very weird, but the more we played them, the more beautiful they sounded together, with interesting harmonies, dissonances and interconnections, and the way they finally arrived at the last bars of this adventure in a perfect harmony.’

‘ALASDAIR AND I HAVE THE SAME APPROACH TO MUSIC. THAT’S WHY WE DON’T NEED TO TALK TOO MUCH WHILE REHEARSING’

The Wimbledon concert was a rare opportunity for a live appearance after many months of lockdown and cancellations of events that would have included touring with her son to promote Music We Love. But the lay-off was ultimately productive for Mullova, since it was during this time that the idea of recording Beethoven sonatas, and then the album of Schubert, came about.

‘I’m used to sabbaticals,’ she explains. ‘I don’t like practising – it’s hard physically and mentally. But of course, I’ve done it all my life since I was four. Once, in 2004, I decided to try to have a sabbatical. I put my Strad in storage and didn’t touch it for the whole eight months. It was so wonderful to have a rest from touring that since then I’ve done it again a few times.’ So when the lockdown started in 2020, taking time off at this point would have seemed the obvious thing to do. But with no opportunity to travel, she quickly found herself becoming unmotivated.

‘I was stuck in the house, and though I was with my family and we had a great time together, I started to feel anxiety from not doing any work at all. Then this idea came to me that I could start learning a Beethoven sonata I hadn’t played before – this was no.7; and this is how I got a new motivation. I can say that it was the first time in my life that I really enjoyed practising the violin. I didn’t have deadlines; I didn’t have to work on anything else, so was not distracted by other pieces I had to prepare; and I didn’t have to go on tour. No admin work, no packing and unpacking, no appointments. I felt so free and happy to practise Beethoven. And it was a very creative and satisfying process, with lots of new ideas of how to play it, lots of experimenting with bowing and fingerings. Every morning I would wake up and look forward to taking the violin and practising. It had never been like this before!’

After two or three weeks working like this, she suddenly thought: why not make a recording? By then, the first UK lockdown had been lifted. Beatson and Barley were both available, as was her choice of venue (the Wyastone Concert Hall in Wales), as was the replica 1805 Walter fortepiano (made by Paul McNulty) for Beatson to use. ‘The instrument was not only free; they delivered it to Alasdair’s home so he could practise for three months on it and I could go and practise with him, which was such luxury.’

Mullova with regular collaborator, pianist Alasdair Beatson

AGA TOMASZEK

They made the recording in July 2020. As more lockdowns came, so did the idea of recording the Schubert. The difference this time was that the fortepiano, a copy (again by McNulty) of an 1819 Graf as used at the time of Schubert, was only available for a very short period of time. It meant that their rehearsals together were with a modern piano. But their rapport, which was there from their very first encounters playing together, was such that she does not feel it impeded their preparation. ‘Alasdair and I have the same kind of approach to music, the same tastes. We hear the same things. That’s why we don’t need to talk too much while rehearsing.’

She is visibly enthusiastic when talking about their partnership, one that began a year before the start of the pandemic after a tip-off from Barley. ‘I’m really happy to have found a pianist like that to work with. I was waiting fo it for a long time, ever since I stopped playing with Kristian Bezuidenhout ten years ago. People asked me if I had plans to record the rest of the Beethoven sonatas. I only did two with Kristian, and for a long time I couldn’t find anyone with whom to continue playing the others.’

At the Schubert recording sessions in Ayriel Studios, Yorkshire

PAUL INGRAM

The use of a fortepiano and violin with gut strings is also important to her, creating the kind of intimate sound that is so appropriate for Schubert – even if it is not without its difficulties. ‘I play this repertoire on gut strings and with classical bow, which makes it sometimes more difficult. There are advantages and disadvantages to using this set-up. The gut strings are just very thick, and some virtuosic stuff becomes much harder to play than on metal strings. But it’s a good sacrifice, so I’m happy that we did it this way. The blend of the fortepiano and the violin with gut strings is absolutely wonderful. The sound of the two instruments together is more intimate and delicate.’

‘I PLAY THE SCHUBERT ON GUT STRINGS AND WITH CLASSICAL BOW. THE BLEND WITH THE FORTEPIANO IS ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL’

She mentions the very beginning of the Fantasie as a case in point. ‘Pianists all struggle with the first tremolo. They struggle and they hate it; it’s always too loud or they miss the notes. When Alasdair plays the beginning, everything is there and it’s so soft and smooth. Because of that I’m really happy we did it with a fortepiano and gut strings. And also the sound of the violin is mellow with a really beautiful tone and colours.’

There was, however, one shock when she came to listen to the first edits: ‘I was listening through a very good set of headphones – really high-quality headphones. And then after I finished I decided to check it on the speakers, which are really good ones. And I was absolutely horrified! I thought: this sounds awful! I was in a bad mood all day. If it is awful with those speakers, what will it be like for people listening in the car or wherever? In the evening, I said to Matthew, who was producing the disc: do you want to hear it? I’m so scared. We started to listen… and it was the most gorgeous sound.’

She puts it down to the kind of adjustment we make when playing immediately after taking off a mute or when she starts playing in a big auditorium having warmed up with protective earplugs in a confined backstage acoustic. ‘You know,’ she cautions all the same, ‘the ears can play tricks.’ But sometimes things do turn out all right in the end. Even with Schubert.

Viktoria Mullova’s new Schubert recording with pianist Alasdair Beatson is reviewed on page 89.