Anne-Sophie Mutter

Born in Rheinfelden, Baden-Württemberg, on June 29, 1963, Anne-Sophie Mutter grew up in Winterthur, Switzerland, and began learning the piano at the age of five, then the violin, where she proved to be very gifted, winning the Jeunesses Musicales federal competition. Noticed as early as the conservatory, she dropped out of school to devote herself to her musical studies. At the age of thirteen, she was hired by Herbert von Karajan, who offered her a position in the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, and at fifteen, the violin prodigy made her first recording for Deutsche Grammophon: her version of Mozart's Violin Concertos Nos. 3 & 5, released in 1978, received rave reviews and several awards. Prior to this, she made her debut at the Salzburg Festival under Daniel Barenboim. After an American tour with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Zubin Mehta, she expanded her discography with recordings of concertos by Beethoven, Brahms, Bruch and Mendelssohn. In 1983, the violin soloist was only twenty years old when she was named Honorary President of the Mozart Society at Oxford University. In addition to Vivaldi's Four Seasons Concerto and Beethoven's Triple Concerto, her repertoire extends into the modern era with works by Lutoslawski and Stravinsky, while Penderecki, Dutilleux and Rihm dedicate scores to her. Married in 1989 to lawyer Detlef Wunderlich, she raised their two children alone after his death in 1995, the year of the release of the Meditation recital. Returning to the stage in 1998, she maintained her popularity through a series of compilations. One of the few classical musicians known to the general public, each of her publications is acclaimed. In 2002, she married composer and conductor André Previn, with whom she recorded her Violin Concerto. The couple divorced in 2006, two years before her premature retirement from the stage on her 46th birthday, to devote herself to humanitarian causes. The boxed set ASM 35 - The Complete Musician, released in 2011, sums up her thirty-five-year career. 2014 saw the release of her first performance of Dvořák's Violin Concerto. Winner of the Yehudi Menuhin Prize from the Isaac Albeniz Foundation in 2016, Anne-Sophie Mutter's 2019 recital Across the Stars features works by film composer John Williams. She wins the Polar Music Prize that same year, and continues her recitals, both on stage and on disc, notably with virtuoso arias by Bach, Bologna, Previn, Vivaldi, Williams (2023) and in 2026, My London and East Meets West, her first recording for Alpha Classics, confronting new works by Unsuk Chin, Thomas Adès, Jörg Widmann and Aftab Darvishi.