Anne-Sophie Mutter, who was born in Rheinfelden in Baden, Germany, began her career in 1976 at the age of thirteen, when she appeared at the Internationale Musikfestwochen Luzern, the forerunner of today’s LUCERNE FESTIVAL. Just one year later, she performed in Salzburg with the Berlin Philharmonic under the baton of Herbert von Karajan. She has given concerts in all of the major music centers around the world ever since, playing not only the classical repertoire but also new works.

Mutter has premiered 28 compositions, including scores by Sebastian Currier, Henri Dutilleux, Sofia Gubaidulina, Witold Lutosławski, Krzysztof Penderecki, André Previn, Wolfgang Rihm, and John Williams. She uses her celebrity specifically to benefit projects and to promote the finest young musicians. For this purpose, she founded the Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation in 2008 and continues to appear with her ensemble of scholarship holders (“Mutter’s Virtuosi”) all over the world, as for example in the fall of 2019 on a tour to South America. Highlights of recent months have included a North American tour with her long-standing duo partner Lambert Orkis and appearances playing Mozart concertos with the Vienna-Berlin Chamber Orchestra in seven European countries and the United States, as well as concerts at the Tanglewood Festival with the Boston Symphony and the Boston Pops Orchestras. Among her many distinctions, Mutter has received the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, the Leipzig Mendelssohn Prize, and the Polar Music Prize (the last in June 2019). She has garnered the coveted Grammy Award four times. Mutter has been awarded the Grand Federal Cross of Merit, the French Order of the Legion of Honor, the Bavarian Order of Merit, and the Grand Austrian Decoration. She was appointed an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2013.

LUCERNE FESTIVAL (IMF) debut on 23 August 1976 as part of the “Young Artists” series in a program of works by de Falla, Paganini, and Sarasate, with Christoph Mutter at the piano.