Anne-Sophie Mutter

Recognized among the preeminent violinists of the present era for her supreme technical command, luminous tonal beauty, and striking personal magnetism, Anne-Sophie Mutter has actively enriched the classical landscape by creating the Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation, an entity that both sponsors new compositions and nurtures emerging violinists. Born June 29, 1963, in the West German town of Rheinfelden near the Swiss border, she began piano lessons at five and took up the violin soon afterward, advancing swiftly enough to study with Aïda Stucki by age nine. At thirteen she performed in recital at the Lucerne Festival, where legendary conductor Herbert von Karajan first encountered her; he subsequently championed her career, arranging her orchestral debut with the Berlin Philharmonic at the 1977 Salzburg Whitsun Festival and joining her for the 1978 debut recording of Mozart violin concertos on Deutsche Grammophon. Their partnership endured, yielding numerous recordings of the principal nineteenth-century violin concertos for the same label.

During the 1980s Mutter made her first appearances in leading musical centers—Washington and New York in 1980, Tokyo in 1981, and Moscow in 1985—establishing herself as a leading violinist by the close of the decade. In 1986 she received the International Chair in Violin Studies at London’s Royal Academy of Music; the next year she founded the Rudolf Eberle Trust to aid talented young string players across Europe, an organization that, after successive mergers, became the Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation in 2008. She married Detlef Wunderlich in 1989, and the couple had two children before his death in 1995; her 1999 account of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons with the Trondheim Soloists was offered in his memory. In 2002 she wed conductor and pianist André Previn, a union that ended in divorce four years later yet left an enduring professional bond; Previn’s Violin Concerto “Anne-Sophie,” Violin Concerto No. 2, and Violin Sonata No. 2 stand among the many world premieres she has given, alongside works by Wolfgang Rihm, Krzysztof Penderecki, and Henri Dutilleux.

Although Mutter declared her retirement in 2008 at age forty-five, the statement was later clarified as a misunderstanding, and she remained highly active throughout the following decade both on disc and on stage. She broke new ground with electronic-music-club appearances at Berlin’s Asphalt in 2013 and Neue Heimat in 2015, events later issued in Deutsche Grammophon’s Yellow Lounge series. Further highlights included a BBC Proms performance during the 2017–2018 season and a recital tour marking Penderecki’s eighty-fifth birthday. She has maintained her longstanding relationship with Deutsche Grammophon, which released a 2018 compilation of her Penderecki recordings; the Tokyo Gala Concert, captured live at Suntory Hall with Seiji Ozawa conducting the Saito Kinen Orchestra, appeared the following year.

Four Grammy Awards number among her many distinctions, as does the 2011 Erich-Fromm-Preis for advancing humanism through social commitment. She has repeatedly contributed her artistry to charitable efforts, among them benefit concerts for victims of the 2011 Japanese tsunami. Mutter holds the Merit Cross 1st Class of the Federal Republic of Germany and is an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2020 she joined cellist Yo-Yo Ma and pianist Daniel Barenboim for a Deutsche Grammophon recording of Beethoven’s Triple Concerto, Op. 56, and returned in 2022 with that label’s release of John Williams’ Violin Concerto No. 2.