Anne-Sophie Mutter
Anne-Sophie Mutter (born 29 June 1963) is a German violinist. Born and raised in Rheinfelden, Baden-Württemberg, Mutter started playing the violin at age five and continued studies in Germany and Switzerland. She was supported early in her career by Herbert von Karajan and made her orchestral debut with the Berlin Philharmonic in 1977. Since Mutter gained prominence in the 1970s and 1980s, she has recorded over 50 albums, mostly with the Deutsche Grammophon label, and performed as a soloist with leading orchestras worldwide and as a recitalist. Her primary instrument is the Lord Dunn–Raven Stradivarius violin.
Anne-Sophie Mutter
Mutter's repertoire includes traditional classical violin works from the Baroque period to the 20th century, but she also is known for performing, recording, and commissioning new works by present-day composers. As an advocate of contemporary music, she has had several works composed especially for her, by Thomas Adès, Unsuk Chin, Sebastian Currier, Henri Dutilleux, Sofia Gubaidulina, Witold Lutosławski, Norbert Moret, Krzysztof Penderecki, André Previn, Wolfgang Rihm, Jörg Widmann, and John Williams.
Mutter has received numerous awards and prizes, including four Grammy Awards (1994, 1999, 2000, and 2005), Echo Klassik awards (2009, 2014), the Grand Decoration of Honour of Austria (2007), the Grand Cross Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (2009), France's Legion of Honour (2009), Spain's Gold Medal of Merit in the Fine Arts (2016), Romania's Grand Cross National Order of Merit (2017), Poland's Gold Medal for Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis (2018), Japan's Praemium Imperiale (2019), the Polar Music Prize (2019), and holds honorary memberships at the Royal Academy of Music (1986) and American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2013).
Mutter founded the Association of Friends of the Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation e.V. in 1997 and the Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation in 2008, which support young string musicians. She frequently gives benefits concerts and, since 2021, has been the president of the German Cancer Aid.
Early life[edit]
Mutter was born in the German town of Rheinfelden, Baden-Württemberg. Her parents were Karl Wilhelm Mutter and Gerlinde Mutter and she was raised with two older brothers. While Mutter's father was a journalist who edited a newspaper in Baden-Württemberg, her mother was the first woman in her family to graduate from college. Although no one in the home played a musical instrument, all were passionate about classical music.[1]
Mutter began piano lessons at age five but after a few months switched to the violin after listening to an album of the Mendelssohn and Beethoven violin concertos that her parents had given to each other as an engagement present. At age six, after only one year of study, Mutter won the National Music Prize, and in 1972 she gave her first concert, with the then 343-year-old Musikkollegium Winterthur.[2]
Inspired by another recording, of violinist Yehudi Menuhin with Wilhelm Furtwängler, she then began studying with Erna Honigberger, a pupil of Carl Flesch; and when Honigberger died, in 1974, she continued with Aida Stucki, also a former student of Flesch, at the Winterthur Conservatory.[3]
Repertoire[edit]
Mutter's works include traditional classic pieces that are part of the violin repertoire. Mutter has performed and made recordings of the major violin concertos by Bach, Bartók, Berg, Brahms, Bruch, Beethoven, Dvořák, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Sibelius, Tchaikovsky, and Vivaldi. Her repertoire includes performances and recordings of the double and triple concertos by Brahms and Beethoven, violin romances by Beethoven, Bruch, and Dvořák, and popular orchestral works by Massenet, Sarasate, and Saint Saëns, and standard solo works by Bach and Paganini. Part of her repertoire encompasses chamber works such as the complete violin sonatas by Beethoven, Brahms, and Mozart, other sonatas by Bartók, Franck, Mendelssohn, Prokofiev and Tartini, trios by Beethoven and Mozart, and string quartets by Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn, and Schubert's Trout Quintet and Fantasy in C Major.[82]
Though her repertoire includes many classical works, Mutter is particularly known for her performances of contemporary music. Several pieces have been specially written for or dedicated to her, including Henri Dutilleux's Sur le même accord, Krzysztof Penderecki's Second Violin Concerto, Witold Lutosławski's Chain 2 and the orchestral version of Partita, and Wolfgang Rihm's Gesungene Zeit ("Time Chant"), Lichtes Spiel, and Dyade and Sofia Gubaidulina's Violin Concerto No. 2 "In tempus praesens," among others. Mutter premiered André Previn's Violin Concerto "Anne-Sophie", whose recording received a Grammy Award.[83] Mutter's recordings of Penderecki's Violin Concerto No. 2, Metamorphosen, and Rihm's Time Chant also received Grammy Awards.[84]
World renowned film score composer and five times Academy Awards winner John Williams composed original music for her, including a pièce for violin, strings and harp called "Markings" (2017), a collection of arrangements of movie themes composed by him for violin and orchestra (recorded by Mutter and Williams with the Recording Arts Orchestra of Los Angeles in "Across the Stars", 2019[85]) and Williams' second violin concerto (composed 2021, to be recorded by Mutter with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the author as conductor, in 2022[86]). Mutter also appeared as soloist in John Williams' debut concert with the Wiener Philharmoniker on 28 and 29 January 2020, recorded by Deutsche Grammophon and released in the live album "John Williams in Vienna", which became the best-selling album of orchestral music in 2020.[87]
Instruments[edit]
She owns two Stradivarius violins: the Emiliani of 1703, and the Lord Dunn-Raven Stradivarius of 1710,[101][102] of which Mutter primarily performs on the latter.[103] Mutter acquired the Emilinia from John & Arthur Beare in London in 1979 and the Lord Dunn-Raven from Bein & Fushi in Chicago in 1984.[104][105][106] She also owns a Finnigan-Klaembt dated 1999 and a Regazzi dated 2005.[107]
Mutter has described her Stradivarius violin as her soul mate, saying "It sounded the way I (had) always been hoping. It's the oldest part of my body and my soul. The moment I am on stage, we are one, musically." Mutter ascribes the personal fit of her Stradivarius violin to the "depths of the colors and the incredible amount of dynamic range."[108] She prefers the Lord Dunn-Raven, stating that the Emilia lacks "a dimension: It has no edginess. I miss the unbridled power. I need this roughness for the eruptive moments of the Beethoven sonatas. You need it for Brahms, Sibelius and contemporary works."[109]
Public engagement[edit]
Throughout her career, Mutter has held many benefit concerts for various organizations such as Save the Children Japan, Save the Children Yemen, Artists against Aids, the Swiss Multiple Sclerosis Society, the Hanna and Paul Gräb Foundation's Haus der Diakonie in Wehr-Öflingen, the Bruno Bloch Foundation, Beethoven Fund for Deaf Children, SOS Children's Villages in Syria and others.[110] In 2018, Mutter gave a benefit concert commemorating a liberation concert in May 1945 for Holocaust survivors by Jewish musicians at the St. Ottilien Archabbey.[111] In 2022, the New York Philharmonic and Mutter performed Jewish music, including Previn's violin concerto at Peenemünde, a former Nazi army research center site.[112][113] Since March 2022, Mutter has been giving benefit concerts for Ukrainians in light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.[114]
Mutter founded the Association of Friends of the Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation e.V. in 1997 and further established the Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation in 2008, which supports young stringed instrument players and provides scholarships for talented individuals.[115] Mutter initiated the foundation based on her belief that "Music should grip people, move people; it should tell stories; it should have an impact." Since 2011, the ensemble group Mutter's Virtuosi performs with Mutter and includes students supported by the foundation that also commissions new works for its students.[116] Notable former scholarship holders and Mutter's Virtuosi members include violinists Timothy Chooi, Fanny Clamagirand, Vilde Frang, Sergey Khachatryan, Arabella Steinbacher, Noa Wildschut, and Nancy Zhou and cellists Pablo Ferrández, Maximilian Hornung, Linus Roth, Daniel Müller-Schott, and Kian Soltani, among others.[117][118]
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Mutter voiced her concerns about the impact of lockdowns on musicians, particularly classical musicians, and called for the German government to provide financial support.[119][120]
In 2021, Anne-Sophie Mutter was elected president of the German Cancer Aid.[121]
Personal life[edit]
In 1989, Mutter married her first husband, Detlef Wunderlich, with whom she had two children, Arabella and Richard. Wunderlich died of cancer in 1995.[122] She dedicated her 1999 recording, Vivaldi: The Four Seasons, to his memory.[123] She married the pianist, composer, and conductor André Previn in 2002.[124][125] The couple divorced in 2006,[126] but continued to collaborate musically and maintained their friendship.[127]
