Anne-Sophie Mutter
violin
Anne-Sophie Mutter achieved world fame when she made her debut in May 1977 at the age of 13 with Mozart’s G major Violin Concerto as part of the Salzburg Whitsun Festival with the Berliner Philharmoniker. The conductor, as in numerous performances and recordings by the artist in the following years, was Herbert von Karajan. In 2008, Mutter also appeared with the orchestra in a series of concerts to mark the 100th anniversary of her important mentor’s birth.
The violinist, who has been awarded the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize and the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany 1st Class, has an incomparable spectrum of timbres and is admired for her powerful and richly nuanced playing as well as for the breadth of her repertoire. Mutter’s meeting with the conductor and patron Paul Sacher inspired her to an intensive exploration of contemporary music. The numerous works which she premiered as dedicatee include compositions by Wolfgang Rihm, Krzysztof Penderecki and Sofia Gubaidulina. Her collaboration with the Berliner Philharmoniker, which she interrupted for a year after the death of Herbert von Karajan, resumed in 2003 under conductors such as Seiiji Ozawa and Sir Simon Rattle.
