Part of being a international virtuoso is enduring nine flights in eight days. It is living from a suitcase and having to snatch back rehearsal time from travelling. The Russian violinist Viktoria Mullova (who performs Stravinsky, Bach and Beethoven tonight at the National Concert Hall) has been very busy. There are no signs of this, however, on a dull Tuesday at her home in Fulham, south-west London, where she is minding her three children.
Mullova is one of the more enigmatic of international musicians, an artist who has proven she can play any style without ever compromising the pure musical integrity of her art. Her sound is pure, clean, and capable of heartbreaking emotion depth, rigour and utter honesty. Not flashy, she can be as aggressive as she is lyrical. In short, whether playing Bartok or Bach, this is the complete violinist.
There are no gimmicks: "I don't jump all over the place when I play, I only move my arms," and she argues with intelligence and an easy humour rather than temperament. At 39, and no longer blonde, but with long, dark hair, she looks like a tall, thoughtful girl, and as she opens her unpainted front door, says "hello and please take your shoes off".
It is a house rule and part of the comfortable atmosphere she has created in a Russian-speaking home that is uncluttered but welcoming, and unintimidatingly tidy despite the best efforts of a 10-month-old baby intent on investigation. Last year alone Mullova produced two outstanding recordings: Stravinsky's Violin Concerto in D and a magnificent interpretation of Bartok's haunting Second Violin Concerto - both of which were performed under Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic, while her rendering of the Brahms Violin Sonatas - which she performed with her duo partner Piotr Anderszewski, who appears with her tonight - was deservedly acknowledged as one of the finest recordings of 1997.
Not only does she convey the humanity of these intimate pieces; her playing of the A Major Sonata beautifully achieves the composer's intention of evoking the human voice in its allusions to songs. On the concert platform last August, Mullova's awesome performance of the formidable Bartok concerto proved the highlight of the Proms.
She is less intense, more relaxed. The children have enhanced her playing. "I love my big family," she says, hugging baby Nadya and exclaiming at her four-year-old daughter's ability to draw. The child has just drawn an instantly recognisable picture of the horse from the new Disney movie Mulan; it is obvious that Katja may be as gifted an artist as her mother. "You've seen the movie? Yes? I haven't - so that's where that horse came from. I don't know how she is so good, neither of us can draw."
Mullova has fulfilled her international engagements effortlessly over the last eight years or so, usually with one or other baby in tow. "I travel by myself with the baby and it goes well."
As she admits, "I'm not so driven by perfection. There's a point where you have to stop looking for perfection and instead you just play the music the way it was intended to be played." She looks very well - younger, happy, less haunted - and seems quite athletic but says she never did any sport. "My childhood was not a normal one," she says matter of factly.
As she watches the children, she remarks that it is difficult to decide whether you encourage a child to play, or let them make up their own minds. Her eldest, son Misha, now 8, plays piano and French horn and, she says, is doing well. "I was pushed, it was the thing I was to do. I didn't mind. It is easy to do something if you are good at it."
The choice of instrument for her was quickly decided. "We couldn't afford a piano. There was no space at home either." The eldest of a family of three girls, the daughters of an engineer father and school teacher mother, Mullova grew up in a Moscow suburb. "I began playing at four-and-a-half." She freely admits her parents concentrated their attentions on her. The training was intense and hours were spent travelling back and forth to music lessons. At nine she was accepted by the Central Music School, part of the Moscow Conservatory, and for the next nine years studied under Volodar Bronin. At 18 she moved on the conservatory.
Why is the standard of Russian musicians so high? Why are there so many outstanding soloists? I mention her countrymen Maxim Vengerov - who will perform in Dublin next January - and Vadim Repin. "It is because of the system. When they decide you are a soloist, that's it - you are trained as one. Of course it is very important in terms of the attention to technique and so on, but it does mean you miss out on chamber playing." Being part of the great Russian tradition does not mean that much to her. "No, music is international. I don't think of it in terms of country."
In 1980, Mullova won the Sibelius Competition in Helsinki. It was satisfying of course, but every Russian musician wants to win the Tchaikovsky Competition, which she did two years later. It is much more than a competition; it is confirmation of supreme talent. It is also an international passport. Long before then, she had decided she wanted to leave Russia. Throughout her conversation, Mullova makes references to things "always being better in the west".
Fifteen years ago her defection was a big story, and a documentary made about her focused more on her decision to leave than on her music. In 1983, while on a concert tour in Scandinavia, she went to the US Embassy in Stockholm and asked for political asylum. This was granted. She spent two years in Washington D.C. How does she now feel about having left? "Well, it was a long time ago. And I have been back; my parents still live there." What was it like at the time? She shrugs. Was she nervous or was it a big adventure? "When you're young I suppose everything is an adventure. Yes I was nervous and excited."
Even now, settled as she is in London with her partner Matthew Barley and their children, and enjoying life there, she gives the impression of having just arrived from somewhere else. For all the sophistication of her remarks about music, her wider views about life are honest and natural. There is nothing ostentatious about her or her home. She loves music and enjoys discussing pieces but is not obsessive. Since 1985 she has played a Stradivarius. It was made in 1723. She smiles at the idea of the many hands who have made music from it: "The ghosts." She holds it out for me to take it. It is her only violin and she recently started using gut strings for Bach and Mozart and explains the differences: "They completely change the pitch, it's a softer sound." She enjoys experimenting, "doing things differently".
Referring to specific pieces of music she often uses the word "colour" and admits to the difficulty of pieces: "Everything is difficult." Above all for her, the essence in playing is the music. "I like to hear it. I don't want to hear Heifetz playing Heifetz, I want to hear whoever it is playing Bach and so on."
Mullova is an artist who admits to enjoying the recording studio: "I like seeing what can be done with sound and so on." Although her first recording was of the Tchaikovsky and Sibelius Concertos, she no longer plays Tchaikovsky or indeed Paganni. Up to a couple of years ago, her repertoire was predominately 20th century: Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Berg, Bartok, Ravel - but she is a classical player and has also recorded the Brahms Violin Concerto, a piece she loves, and clearly she has no problem with the romantic repertoire.
Aware she has often been described as cold and anti-Romantic, she says: "I have got used to the strange things some people have written. But I think the next time I am accused of this I am going to agree and say `well, yes I come from a very cold country, what do you expect?' I think people make up labels to categorise people and it has nothing to do with their music."
For her recording of the Bach Violin concertos in 1995 she formed a seven-strong ensemble: "My name was used, but it's not my ensemble. The players performed on period instruments." The previous year she had re-recorded the Partitas. "I love Bach; he is the complete composer." Her love of Beethoven is also widely known and she regards his Violin Concerto as "a great mystery". Emphasising that it is a classical piece, she says it is always, wrongly, played in a romantic style. It is possibly her favourite piece: "Yes that and the Brahms. But the Beethoven, yes it is unique, a masterpiece." Perhaps now is the time for her to record it.
Viktoria Mullova plays at the NCH/Irish Times Celebrity Concert with pianist Piotr Anderszewski in the NCH tonight at 8 p.m.
