At the Orpheum Theatre on Friday, April 4

It was a hyped-up crowd that swarmed the Orpheum last Friday night, with plenty of jostling, sniping, and elbowing as breathless fans rushed the will-call window and battled it out to be first through the theatre doors.

It wasn’t the sort of behaviour you normally associate with the symphony-going public, but this wasn’t just any Vancouver Symphony Orchestra concert: this, the fifth evening of the orchestra’s Raymond James Beethoven Festival, featured the return after 19 years of violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter—the Madonna of the classical-music world. While the Material Girl was busy giving the pope conniptions in the 1980s with her in-your-face sexuality and liberal use of Catholic imagery, the German-born Mutter set tongues wagging—and elderly concertgoers hyperventilating—by performing in gravity-defying strapless Christian Dior gowns and working her Brigitte Bardot–like good looks in album covers.

Now 44, Mutter—like Madonna—doesn’t let a little thing like the passage of time get between her and couture. When the former prodigy emerged on-stage, following the orchestra’s inspired performance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68, Pastoral, she was just as her publicity shots had promised: still blond, still curvy in all the right places, and wrapped in a golden, figure-hugging dress that would not have looked out of place on the red carpet at the Academy Awards.

On the eve of the 100th birthday of the late, legendary Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan, there was added anticipation in the air, because Mutter was to perform Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61—the same piece she recorded with Karajan for a famed 1980 release. What became clear, as the orchestra played the long introduction that precedes the soloist’s entry, was that in addition to Mutter’s obvious love of glamour, she is also a very serious musician. Eyes closed, swaying gently, she let the music wash over, reaching deep inside herself before lifting her Stradivarius to play the first notes of a thoughtful and focused performance that had flashes of brilliance. What Mutter lacked in spontaneity she made up for in virtually flawless technique and studied musicality, enrapturing her listeners with careful pianissimos filled with sound and crackling spiccato notes.

The last bars of the concerto had barely faded before the audience was on its feet, coaxing what appeared to be a reluctant Mutter back for four curtain calls and, at last, an encore: a little taste of unaccompanied Johann Sebastian Bach. And then she was gone, evidently a believer in the motto, "Leave them wanting more." They did.