Gratuitous Cranky Musickal Posting ***

(***Extra crankiness due to the fact that I stood on the metro platform for two solid hours this morning freezing my llama hooves off.)

Anne-Sophie Mutter is an extremely popular concert violinist. And yet, every time I hear one of her recordings, my reaction ranges from the lukewarm to the outright incredulous.

This morning I happened to hear her perform Pablo de Sarasate's Carmen Fantasy. It's a trashy piece of music, designed mostly to let the solo violinist show off, but I confess to a weakness for it. Nonetheless, in Ms. Mutter's hands, I though the thing awfully butchered - wild shrieks, questionable accuracy and indifferent tone throughout.

So why is Ms. Mutter so immensely popular? My guess would be that it is because she happens to be something of a babe:

Yup. Call me a cynic, but I doubt, say, Itzhak Perlman would have got very far playing like that.