Violinist Mutter, Revving Her Motor

"She's one of the premier violinists of all time," says cellist Lynn Harrell, who has performed extensively with Mutter. "But she's always searching for something more in the music, something special. There's no sitting on her laurels."

While the retirement rumors were overblown, Mutter's life does seem to be shifting gears. Last month, she announced that her marriage to the composer and conductor Sir Andre Previn, whom she wed in 2002, had ended in divorce. She won't talk about it, but musicians in Europe say they weren't surprised; the 34-year age difference between the two was just too great.

"We were very happily married, and we will always stay good friends," she says quietly. "Let's leave it at that."

Mutter and Previn will continue to play together, but her personal life -- long the subject of European tabloids -- is becoming almost ordinary.

She lives in an art-filled house in Munich with her two children (Arabella, 16, and Richard, 12) from her first marriage to lawyer Detlef Wunderlich, who died of cancer in 1995. And while she still travels in stratospheric circles, her glamorous Monte Carlo days, she says, are "definitely over." Gone are the fast cars of her youth -- she famously bought a Porsche before she was old enough to drive -- replaced by a string of Chrysler Voyagers. (She's gone through four of them.)

"Working is a little more difficult, now," she says. "I have to be over by lunch, because the rest of the day is driving kids around."

In person, Mutter is unaffected and relaxed, with a quick sense of humor, and she dismisses the whole megastar thing as barely worth mentioning. Those sleek, elegantly sexy John Galliano gowns she performs in? "Just work uniforms," she shrugs.

She doesn't even listen to classical music, she says -- she's an Elvis fan, has Madeleine Peyroux on her iPod, and her cellphone plays Ennio Morricone. She jogs, meditates, does a little yoga, monitors her daughter's taste in rap and can't wait to see the new James Bond movie. In short: more the minivanned yuppie than Strad-packing diva.

"These days in Munich, it's not uncommon to see her out in the streets in jeans and a sweat shirt, boarding the subway with the kids," says pianist Orkis. "A decade ago that just wouldn't have happened."

But there's another side to Mutter as well, one that's brought her a steady stream of criticism. She's often seen as remote and even imperious onstage -- a sort of stern, unsmiling Valkyrie of the violin, barely noticing the mere mortals at her feet, accepting multiple curtain calls but rarely deigning to give an encore.

"I've never seen a performer who gives less onstage," says noted British critic Norman Lebrecht. "It is perfect, it is extremely well played, but she doesn't communicate with the audience. There's no eye contact. And she doesn't seem to bring any part of her personality to bear on the music. She's not so much a presence in the music, as an absence."

Mutter heatedly rejects the criticism. "I look pretty grim and gruesome when I play," she admits. "But I'm not an actor -- I'm a musician! I've never seen my role as having to 'act' something, on an out-of-music level. I'm communicating through the music, and my soul is out there, naked."

Her voice rises: "I'm not in the mood to smile while I'm playing; I'm there to transmit the music!"

To many, that's what makes her great.

"She hasn't based her career on the razzle-dazzle of the virtuoso," Harrell says. "She plays the violin as well as anyone has -- ever -- but she isn't out there to play faster or more brilliantly. She's out there to bring the listener closer to the intrinsic value of the music."

And what is the value of music? Mutter pauses for a moment, thinking.

"Music is a microcosm of life -- that's what Lambert and I try to bring forward in the Mozart sonatas," she says. "Everything is there -- everything. Like the Sonata in E Minor," she says, referring to the piece she played earlier that morning. "He wrote it around the time of the death of his mother, and he also had to leave his first love. It's very subtle and totally heartbreaking. When we're done, we have to go offstage and take deep breaths."

She smiles, as if hearing the music in her mind. "Because, you see," she says with quiet finality, "it's directly connected to the heart."