Programme Guide

To this day, guest appearances by Anne-Sophie Mutter with the Berliner Philharmoniker are an event. After all, there is no other star of our time whose career has been more closely linked with the orchestra. It was a sensation when the young Anne-Sophie Mutter played Mozart’s G major concerto at the Salzburg Whitsun Festival in 1977 conducted by Herbert von Karajan. “She played gorgeously, and above all, not at all like a child prodigy,” raved the reviewer in Die Welt. This described concisely the phenomenon that was Mutter: a musician, whose youthful appearance contrasted with incredible technique and artistic maturity. And then there was, and of course still is, her tone which reveals itself in her Dvořák performance.

In the second part of the concert, all attention is on the man at the conductor’s desk: Manfred Honeck, music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, who made his debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker in this concert. He presents one of the most powerful and diverse compositions of the 20th century: Witold Lutosławski’s Concerto for Orchestra.