Tampa Bay Times from St. Petersburg, Florida • 71

CFG IF "section SUNDAY, MAY 6, 1990 ST. PETERSBURG TIMES ii Photo by ANTHONY CRICKMAV ANNE-SOPHIE MUTTER: "I think that it is talent that matters in the end. I don't think it matters if you look good, or that you speak with Johnny Carson or that you are personally popular." baatunfy dud XStf DATELINE FLORIDA VN JEFF aDD Ah, wilderness! In my solitude I admire your loveliness. But this city boy is also wary of dangerous liaisons. I've canoed and hiked in the Everglades, and got lost briefly on several occasions.

I was nervous when it happened, but I was close to a trail, accompanied by other people, and confident that nothing would happen other than an adventure. Here, in wilderness solitude, it's me, myself and I. In Florida, there aren't many places left to get lost in. The Everglades and the Green Swamp, I suppose, could swallow up a person who forgot to tell where he or she was going. The Ocala, Osceola and Apalachicola national forests might lose a solitary hiker or two.

I probably could get lost in Tosahatchee State Preserve if I had to. But probably not. Florida has been tamed. "Don't do it. Dontcha break my heart.

Pleezedon'tdoit." Stop the concert! Tracks on the beach! Raccoons. You can see where they walked to the water to what do raccoons do at the water? Do they wash food before eating? Maybe, but not in salt water. A mystery. Well, perhaps not. Here are the scattered legs of fiddler crabs.

The raccoon was probably on a fishing Please see ALONE 4F Anne-Sophie Mutter's sophisticated image and brilliant violin playing propel her to the top of her profession. lone. I'm riding my bicycle on an isolated bayside beach in the Florida Panhandle. It's a wil-fmL derness preserve within St. A JosePn Peninsula State Park.

mJm ml Shells are crunching beneath my tires, and the horseshoe crabs are scuttling in the shallows along the tidal line. I haven't seen another human being in an hour. Haven't heard a human voice except my own. I'm alone, as alone as you can get in modern Florida, and it's a strange feeling. I'm frightened and exhilarated at the same time.

I love seeing nothing taller than a pine and hearing nothing noisier than a screeching os-prey. The only visible building is 10 miles across St. Joe's Bay. The nearest telephone is six miles away at the park office. Alone.

"Baby, dontcha do it," I sing to the rufous-sided towhees chirping in the palmetto thickets. "Don't do it. Dontcha break my heart. Pleeeeze don't do it dontcha break my heart!" It's an old Marvin Gaye tune and I can sing it as loudly as I want and nobody nobody can tell me to pipe down. Ah, solitude.

Iam also a city boy, a city boy who likes his comforts, a city boy who, despite himself, is nervous about being completely alone in the wilderness. What if the raw oysters I ate for lunch give me hepatitis? What if I suffer an at tack of pancreatitis? What if my lungs clog with sarcoidosis? Or, more likely, what if I fall off my bike and bust a collarbone? Who will bring me morphine? A turkey vulture? I forgot to tell my wife and kids where I was going and when I would return. w- -A 1 'A By RUSSELL STAMETS Times Performing Arts Critic NEW YORK he Lord Dunraven sat upon a clear acrylic dais in a fashionable small hotel on Manhattan's West Side. The Stradivarius violin made in 1710 and named the Lord Dunraven later glowed under the aggressive lights of a photographer but reflected a warm, woody beam onto the face of its current owner, violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter. "We must be very quiet," said Mutter, who watched the violin with the intensity of a mother watching her child take its first steps.

"I'm so nervous it could fall over." But a misstep that day was as unlikely as when Mutter and the Lord Dunraven are on stage together. The 26-year old German violinist has established herself as one of the leading soloists and most popular personalities in the classical music world. From her years as a wunderkind and her career-launching association with legendary conductor Herbert von Karajan, Mutter has come into her own as a respected and tough musician with nerves and occasionally a tongue of steel. Her physical beauty and image marketing have also played a role in winning her attention on the world stage. Part of Mutter's management strategy has a been a careful control of her performance schedule calculated for maximum career enhancement.

And so it's an unusual coup that two of her eight solo recitals in the United States this year will be in Florida. The young violinist's concerts Monday in Clearwater and Wednesday in Sarasota will cover a range of styles, from the cerebral to the showy. Mutter is a singular talent, but her success coincides with two trends in the classical music world. Though the bulk of great violinists of the past were men, a new group of women violinists from several countries have become major talents. The funky Nadja Saler-no-Sonnenberg, petite Midori from Japan, Korean Kyung-Wha Chung and Russian-emigre Victoria Mullova are some of the leading names of the new wave.

And Mutter's photogenic looks and haute-Euro lifestyle dovetail nicely with the increased emphasis the classical music promotion machine places on appearance and off-stage personality. The stunning bare-shouldered Dior gowns she wears on stage have become her signature. She wears Yves St. Laurent in the day. She has a fan club in Japan and a custom-ordered white Please see MUTTER 7F Timet art JOE TONEUJ 1 Yoke's Iff atar dtesitilh) i John Lennon's widow speaks about his murder, their life together and the constant pain that will never go away.

By GLENN PLASKIN NEW YORK he sits alone. i "The widows of the world," she whispers, "they under Still, the world never lets her forget. Still she is defiled by many as the wicked sorceress who wrecked the Beatles; by others, as a crass opportunist who used Lennon's fame to pro- mote her own recording career. Others see her as the savior of a man who was desperately in need of a mother and stable home. She says they're wrong, too.

No matter. Yoko Ono can take care of herself A shrewdly capable executor of a sprawling empire estimated to be worth between $500-million and 1 -billion, she oversees with care the licensing and marketing of records, copyrights, artworks and souvenirs, and she is supported in all this by Sam Havadtoy, a 38-year-old interior designer, her constant companion since 1981. Aloft this day in "Sky," the all-white living room so named by the Lennons when they founded their whimsical "Newtopian Embassy" in the Dakota, Yoko Ono sits peacefully, bathed in white. "That's my favorite color," she Please see YOKO 6F in Liverpool, nestles inside Central Park, winding paths and wildflowers maintained in perpetuity by the widow. "After John died," she says, "some days, it just wasn't that important for me to go on." But there still was Sean, the son she bore at 42, just 5 years old when John Lennon died Dec.

8, 1980. "As a mother I told myself, 'I gotta And so she has. Sean, now 14 and tucked away in a Swiss school, already is testing his wings in a recording studio; Yoko is jetting from London to Tokyo to Copenhagen, to Venice and Oslo and Milan and Moscow, overseeing retrospectives of 150 major works created in her avant-garde heyday; and she is supervising the elaborate celebration of John Lennon's 50th birthday year, a celebration kicked off Saturday in Liverpool, to be followed by events in Tokyo, Moscow and the United States. And so, Yoko Ono, the artist, the singer, the composer of 150 songs, the widow, is doing just fine. "It's not a bad time in my life," she says, gently stroking her three Persian cats Sascha, Misha and Charro.

stand this" understand the mournful lament of Ocean Child, Yoko, a spirit filled with poetry. "Sleepless nightthe moon is bright," she pens into her writing book. "Woke up this morningBlues around my headNo need to ask the reason why. Perched at the window of her fortress, the Dakota, Manhattan's oldest apartment building, scene of the horrible "thing" nearly 10 years ago, Yoko Ono stares down at Strawberry Fields. The teardrop-shaped garden, an echo of John Lennon's childhood days AP Tt's hard to see what's hap-1 pening when your eyes are filled with tears." Yoko Ono kusic preview Anne-Sophie Mutter Anne-Sophie Mutter, violin, and Lambert Orkis, piano: Kreisler Variations on a Theme by Corelli, Debussy Sonata, Beethoven Sonata In minor, Op.

30 No. 2, Lutoslawksi Partita and Sarasate Carmen Fantasy. Performance 8 p.m. Monday at Ruth Eckerd Hall, Clearwater. Tickets are $15 to $24 and are available by calling 791-7400 (Pinellas) or 854-1538 (Hillsborough).

Performance 8:15 p.m. Wednesday at Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall, Sarasota. Tickets are $18.50 to $22.50 and are available by calling 953-3366 (Sarasota). Movies SF SIDZ Ann Landers 7F Sewing 8F Double speak A man who speaks the same language of love is rare 8F Picture of success Athletes can enhance their performance by visualizing 3F Potent pills Medication can affect your sex life negatively and positively 3F Alligator Express 10F .1.