Missouri Classical Music News and Notes

In 1999, along with J. Henry Fair, a photographer who was then her companion, Ms. Grimaud opened the Wolf Conservation Center, an educational facility in South Salem, N.Y. On 29 acres, the center currently is home to 17 wolves. Four socialized “ambassador wolves” are on view to the public; the other 13 are shielded from human contact, so that they can ultimately be returned to the wild, as a couple and their pups were in July.

“We started building the facility in ’97,” she said, “opened in ’99, and the place is doing really well. We started with 500 visitors in the first two years, and now we’re at 20,000 a year.”

Three of the ambassador wolves can be seen in a striking photograph on the dust jacket of “Wild Harmonies,” which shows them greeting Ms. Grimaud after a long trip, one nuzzling each of her ears; the other, her chin. It was a spontaneous moment, she said, not something that could be staged.

Her advocacy work has aroused a certain skepticism in the classical music world. Some have suggested that she’s in it as much for her own image as for the wolves’. But surely there are easier — and safer — ways to gain publicity. With her well-defined features and dreamily expressive blue eyes, for example, Ms. Grimaud could easily have followed the glamour route of the violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter and others. Instead, she tends to play down her looks, at least onstage. At a recent Carnegie Hall concert with the NHK Symphony Orchestra of Tokyo, she appeared in an understated black pantsuit and a severe hairstyle.

• Grimaud's web site at Deutsche Grammophon, with video and sound samples.
  
  
• A WYNC radio interview with Grimaud
  
  
• Biographical info
  
  
• Wikipedia biography