Tonight I grabbed a few discs from the back of the shelf. Anne-Sophie Mutter’s complete Beethoven violin sonatas with Lambert Orkis, as well as her recordings of the Brahms sonatas with Alexis Weisenberg, and a collection of Renaissance music. I remember quite well the hype of the Mutter/Orkis complete Beethoven. They spent a year touring, performing the complete set over two nights at each venue, and the recordings were going to be the culmination of the work. The recordings were also all live (which I was particularly excited about… I love live recordings). In the classical music world, you often don’t have a set of discs anticipated for months, but these certainly were. I got a promotional set of them, and while I won’t say I was disappointed, I was certainly underwhlemed at the time. I don’t remember why, I just remember thinking… ‘eh’. And while I remember that feeling, I can’t think of what recordings before then that I would have suggested. No matter… but this is the reason these discs found their way to the back of my shelves rather then the front (where the Menuhin/Kempff discs lived). But listening to them tonight, I am finding them much more interesting. I would even use the word enchanting. I put on the A minor (number 4) before I started typing this, and it is great. Perhaps I just needed to be older or to know these works better, but I am excited to listen to this set again now. The last movement of the A minor is amazing (I’ve played it three times now). I love how much her bowing and tone color can vary, and Orkis’ playing is very dynamic. Most of all, the two really seem to be breathing together. Now this is something that I definitely appreciate more now then I used to. Not that it used to bother me, just that it wasn’t something that I noticed as much as I do now. Anyways – I know what I’ll be playing tomorrow morning as I make waffles with Celia for father’s day breakfast.