This Blu-ray sampler with carefully selected concerts accompanies Seiji Ozawa's impressive career over 3 decades. Seiji Ozawa was not only Japan’s best-known conductor but also the founder of the Saito Kinen Festival in Matsumoto, which in 2015 was renamed the Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival. Special feature included in this edition from Matsumoto: on the occasion of Maestro Ozawa’s 80th birthday, Martha Argerich and Matthias Goerne joined the orchestra to perform Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy, Op. 80, plus a rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ - a deeply emotional moment for the Maestro!

The 11 20th-century violin works included on Anne-Sophie Mutter's meaty four-CD compilation were recorded between February 1988 and January 1997. Mutter is a dazzling performer. Her performance of the Sibelius Violin Concerto throbs with new-dawn optimism. Her intense dialogue with pianist Lambert Orkis is spiked with wit in Bartók's Violin Sonata No.2 , the only chamber piece in the set.

In 2006, to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's birth plus the 30th anniversary of Anne-Sophie Mutter's public debut, Deutsche Grammophon released new recordings of the German violinist in all the Austrian composer's major works featuring her instrument. To celebrate Mutter's undeniable beauty, each body of works was released with a different photograph of Mutter on the cover: the set of concertos had Mutter poured into a stunning bottle green mermaid gown, the set of sonatas had Mutter wrapped in a shimmering golden yellow strapless gown, and this set of the piano trios has Mutter's wonderfully made-up face and marvelously coifed hair in close-up.

Warhorses, strong in staying power, are rarely noted also for finesse; and much the same is true of their musical counterparts. Lalo's Symphonie espagnole, however, is something of an exception by reason of its crystalline scoring and its grace; and this particular warhorse, now more than a century old, seems to be well into its second wind. It was written for the Spanish virtuoso Sarasate, whose own showily brilliant but superficial Zigeunerweisen here makes a logical, if all too short, coupling.

I must say that this recording surely has something magic about it. But I wouldn't really go as far as the previous reviewer, to say it's sexual - it's far more than earthly pleasures - it's ethereal. You can just sit back in your sofa, close your eyes and feel that there's something more than just the music you hear in this recording. Sensitive, intensitive, and sensual, sometimes on the border to vulnerability, is the playing from especially Ms Mutter.

Ce CD ravira les fans de la violoniste prodige (à partir de sa cinquième année) Anne-Sophie Mutter, dont Herbert von Karajan fut le découvreur et le mentor, dès qu'elle atteignit l'âge de 13 ans. D'ailleurs, ce dernier est présent pour un bon nombre des plages de ce disque - à la tête des Berliner Philharmoniker. Mais, il ne faut pas oublier de signaler aussi la présence d'un autre grand de la direction d'orchestre : l'américain James Levine, avec les Wiener Philharmoniker.

August 2002 witnessed a celebrity marriage not forecast in the crystal ball of any tabloid columnist; that of youthful, 40-ish violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter to 72-year-old pianist/conductor/composer André Previn. While their union may have set gossips' tongues to wag, in purely musical terms it is a winning combination for the most part. The Violin Concerto "Anne-Sophie" is an André Previn work completed in March 2001 and intended for Mutter.

Berg's Violin Concerto (1935) is considered by many the most accessible and emotionally engaging piece of music in the atonal idiom. His last completed work, the concerto was written as a memorial "to an angel" upon the premature death of Alma Mahler's daughter Manon Gropius. But as with all of Berg's oeuvre, an autobiography of the composer's inner life is also thoroughly woven into the score.

I"m much more a fan of Mutter/Karajan Brahms violin concerto than the double concerto that is paired here. I have other Brahms Double Concerto recordings I prefer. But, this Karajan GOLD Brahms Violin Concerto is definitely a sonic upgrade from a standard DG (non-gold) issue when the Violin Concerto was all that was put on the disc. I'm hearing more spatial relationships, more tonal accuracy, more upper end and balance.

Anne-Sophie Mutter's Bartók Second is clearly one of the best around. The first movement is a difficult piece to bring off, if only because the beginning is so simple and tuneful compared to later developments. Mutter proves an excellent guide to the music's ongoing development, never losing site of that folk-like opening and always returning to it as if to say, "See, it was there all along!"

The violin is Penderecki’s own instrument (he studied it during his youth), it can therefore be argued that he has a special relationship with the instrument, perhaps it was this relationship that was the spark of inspiration that led to him writing the Concerto after he and Anne-Sophie Mutter performed the Violin Concerto No. 1 of Prokofiev together in 1988, with the resulting Concerto described as creating an “impression of a vast labyrinth” in the booklet notes.

Universally considered as one of the greatest violinists of our time, Anne-Sophie Mutter’s stunning and multi-faceted music-making extends across masterworks from the full breadth of the violin repertoire. Mutterissimo – The Art of Anne-Sophie Mutter is a selection of highlights from her discography, personally picked by Mutter herself, bringing together recordings that date for the most part from the last twenty years.

"Stupendous brilliance, breathless virtuosity. Anne-Sophie Mutter's Virtuosi thrilled at the Vienna Musikverein." (Die Presse) In June 2023, star violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter gave an impressive concert in Vienna with her Virtuosi ensemble. Based on this, a varied album has now been created, with music by Antonio Vivaldi, J. S. Bach, Joseph Bologne, André Previn and John Williams. "Growing up, I'm on the trail of storytellers," Mutter says of her work with the Virtuosi, a rotating ensemble of current and former Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation scholarship holders.