Violin goddess Anne-Sophie Mutter has had a three-decade-long love affair with a man five times her age. And Vancouver Symphony Orchestra audiences are about to reap the rewards of the classical star’s passionate relationship with Ludwig van Beethoven.

On Friday (April 4) at the Orpheum, in her first local appearance in 19 years, Mutter will join the VSO to perform the composer’s Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61, a piece of major personal and professional significance to her. Reached on the phone at a San Francisco concert stop, the vivacious, articulate German-born virtuoso speaks like she’s truly gotten inside the head—and heart—of Beethoven.

“It’s music of serene beauty,” says Mutter, who performs under Bramwell Tovey’s baton as part of the VSO’s six-concert, Raymond James–sponsored Beethoven festival. “In the violin concerto you won’t find that ”˜fighting’ Beethoven, you’ll find the man that, for once, was at peace with the world. The second movement is like a love song. We all know that Beethoven wasn’t very lucky in his love life, and I think it was because he was an incredible romantic. I think that for him the perfect woman only existed in his fantasy. And I think much of that yearning for that perfect place, that eternal love and harmony, is in his music.”

The 44-year-old is just off a European tour that found her saluting the late Herbert von Karajan’s 100th birthday with a performance of the concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic. The former child prodigy first auditioned for the great conductor with a solo from the piece—after which he sent her home for a year to practise. But she tried out again in 1977, and the rest is history. Together, they made the seminal 1980 recording of the Violin Concerto, and she spent 13 years under the maestro’s tutelage. Mutter has worked for every major orchestra and conductor in the world—famously, she was married to André Previn until 2006, when they parted after four years—but it’s Karajan’s influence that has been the deepest on her approach to Beethoven.

“Karajan was a master of building up tension, understanding the architecture of the concerto,” says Mutter, who’s as well known for her technical perfectionism as for her emotional interpretations. Flashing back to her years with the conductor, she adds: “He always pushed me to the edge of my ability but never pushed me over.”

A lot has changed since her years with Karajan. Many point to Mutter, who usually appears on her CDs and posters in an array of backless and strapless gowns, as the first classical star to market sex along with her skills on a Stradivarius. These days, dozens of long-tressed string-playing vixens use beauty to market themselves. But Mutter has mixed feelings about the trend, especially from what she’s observed.

“These days it’s even more difficult to see your career as a long-term development and not as a short-term sensation,” she says. “For my young colleagues it’s so hard to resist the temptation to make recordings too early, to make too many recordings, exploiting their private life, et cetera, et cetera. I would rather see a young musician developing their repertoire and reading and speaking about music. Maybe the focus today is too much on the personality rather than on the composer and what you have to do in order to serve the composer.”

Mutter is right, even if she’s known as much for her glamour as for her sizable talent. Still, she insists she thinks of herself as just a single, working mother who’s devoted to her 17-year-old daughter and a son who, she’s happy to report, just flew in from Europe to join her in California for his 14th birthday.

But what about those glittering, gravity-defying gowns, which we’re sure to see when the blond beauty courts Beethoven once again this weekend? “You know, it’s part of my life, the concert gowns, and they’re comfortable and I totally forget them once I’m on-stage,” the violinist says with un-diva-like humour. “I guess it’s like with a circus horse: the horse is dressed in all that stuff, and it triggers a reaction [in the audience]. Once the dress is on, it’s concert time, and in a way it’s my working clothes. I’ve been doing concerts for so long that it’s nothing special to put on an evening gown, believe me. It’s more special to get out of it and have a shower and have a beer or something!”