Viktoria Mullova, Between Perfection and Freedom

A novel portrait of the virtuoso violinist Viktoria Mullova interspersed with images from concerts and rare archive footage

Born in Moscow in 1959, violinist Viktoria Mullova lived the life of a Russian child prodigy educated with a rod of iron in a culture of performance. Today, aged 40, Viktoria has been freed from her chains, in every respect. This film shows her in private with her family. It reveals to us a musician full of curiosity who plays all repertoires, from baroque to classical and from jazz to contemporary music, and a happy woman who lives with her husband, cellist Matthew Barley, and her three children in London. We follow her on a trip to Moscow where she sees her father and we attend a recording session in Genoa with Il Giardino Armonico. She talks about her memories, her lessons with her professor Leonid Kogan, her First Prize at the Tchaikovsky Competition in 1982 and her decisive meeting with Claudio Abbado: a Viktoria Mullova no one might have imagined.