Anne Sophie Mutter, photo. © Tina Tahir / DG
I feel honoured by Krzysztof Penderecki’s friendship, and that I will play La Follia for the first time as he wrote it for me. Please believe me that nothing will replace the moment when I pick up the notes to a new song written by such an eminent composer and I know that no one else has seen them before me. – said Anne-Sophie Mutter in an interview with Rzeczpospolita (Polish daily paper)
The world premiere of La Follia took place on 14th December 2013 at New York's prestigious Carnegie Hall. A performance on 17th May 2014 will be its European premiere, and to be more specific, it will take place in Paris. The new Penderecki composition will be performed in front of an audience at the Salle Pleyel.
La Follia requires dazzling virtuosity from the performer, but a mere showpiece it is not. Penderecki’s La Follia is a rich, complex, and intensely poetic work. Mutter played with arresting poise and sensitivity. Himself a violinist, Penderecki has written a piece that explores the deepest reaches of the violin’s natural voice. – wrote Eric C. Simpson of the New York Classical Review
Through passages of misty tone and deliberate accretions of intensity, Anne-Sophie Mutter somehow makes you aware, of how many interpretive options there are beyond the one she has chosen, how many roads through a given work have gone untraveled. – wrote Zachary Woolfe of the New York Times
The concert takes place on 17th May 2014 at 8pm. Tickets cost from 10 to 80 euros and can be bought at the Salle Pleyel website.
Sources: Salle Pleyel, New York Classical Review, New York Times; March 2014, translated: Katarzyna Maksimiuk, 08.05.2014