Anne-Sophie Mutter instrument violin
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 and performed as a soloist with leading orchestras worldwide and as a recitalist. Her primary instrument is the Lord Dunn–Raven Stradivarius violin. 
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
Mutter was born in the German town of Rheinfelden, Baden-Württemberg which lies some 15 kilometres (9 mi) east of Basel on the northern bank of the High Rhine river, across which lies the Swiss town of the same name. 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 her family played a musical instrument, Mutter's family was passionate about classical music.Mutter began playing the piano at the age of five, and shortly afterwards took up the violin. At the age of six, Mutter won the National Music Prize, and in 1972, she gave her first concert with the Winterthurer Stadtorchester. Inspired by a recording of violinist Yehudi Menuhin and Wilhelm Furtwängler, she began studying with Erna Honigberger, a pupil of Carl Flesch. After Honigberger's death in 1974, she continued her studies with Aida Stucki at the Winterthur Conservatory.Career
1970s-1980s
Mutter's playing began to receive attention and she stopped attending school to devote herself full-time to music. Conductor Herbert von Karajan arranged for her to play with the Berlin Philharmonic. Only 13 years old at the time, she made her public debut on stage in 1976 at the Lucerne Festival, where she played Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 4 in D major. In 1977, she performed at the Salzburg Festival and with the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Daniel Barenboim. Critics praised the level of maturity in Mutter's performance, with one reviewer of Die Welt writing, ""She played it ravishingly, and above all, she did not play it at all like a child prodigy. Her technique is fully mature."
At 15, Mutter made her first recording of the Mozart Third and Fifth violin concerti with Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic.Mutter started to perform outside Europe in the early 1980s. In 1980, Mutter made her American debut with the New York Philharmonic playing Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto under Zubin Mehta. That same year she also made her debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra performing Beethoven's Romance in G major and Mozart's Third Violin Concerto under Georg Solti, and her debut with the National Symphony Orchestra playing Mozart's Third Violin Concerto under Mstislav Rostropovich. The following year Mutter made her debut at Carnegie Hall playing Mozart's Fifth Violin Concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Riccardo Muti, and made her debut with the Boston Symphony Orchestra performing Bruch's Violin Concerto under Seiji Ozawa in 1983.  Mutter's Japanese debut was in Tokyo (1981) with the Berlin Philharmonic under Karajan, followed by her Russian debut in Moscow (1985).After three years of her debut with the London Symphony Orchestra in 1980, in which she played Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto under Claudio Abbado, Mutter was named the honorary President of Oxford University's Mozart Society. 
In 1985, at the age of 22, she was made an honorary fellow of the Royal Academy of Music (London) and head of its faculty of international violin studies and in 1986 an honorary member.Beginning in the late 1980s, Mutter expanded her repertoire and devoted herself more to contemporary works, a focus that would become a significant component of her career. In 1986, Mutter premiered  Witold Lutosławski's Chain 2, Dialogue for Violin and Orchestra, with the Zurich Collegium Musicum. Norbert Moret composed his Violin  Concert En rêve for Mutter in 1988.In 1988, she also made a grand tour of Canada and the United States, performing as a soloist with orchestras and giving solo recitals with pianist Lambert Orkis. Mutter made her recital debuts in  New York (at Carnegie Hall), Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, Montreal, Toronto, and other cities and debuted with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra.  Mutter premiered music by Krzysztof Penderecki and André Previn and performed classic works such as Beethoven's Violin Concerto and violin sonatas by Beethoven, Brahms, Franck, and Tartini.Repertoire
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.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. Mutter's recordings of Penderecki's Violin Concerto No. 2, Metamorphosen, and Rihm's Time Chant also received Grammy Awards.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) and Williams' second violin concerto (composed 2021, to be recorded by Mutter with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the author as conductor, in 2022). 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.Instruments
She owns two Stradivarius violins: the Emiliani of 1703, and the Lord Dunn-Raven Stradivarius of 1710, of which Mutter primarily performs on the latter. Mutter acquired the Emilinia from John & Arthur Beare in London in 1979 and the Lord Dunn-Raven from Bein & Fushi in Chicago in 1984. She also owns a Finnigan-Klaembt dated 1999 and a Regazzi dated 2005.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." 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."
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