E x p E r i E n c E
FEBRUARY 26 - 28, 2015
ANNE-SOPHIE MUTTER, SAN FRANCISCO SYMPHONY SAN FRANCISCO, USA
Ever since her solo debut at the Lucerne Festival in 1976, virtuoso violinist AnneSophie Mutter has been one of the most respected, intriguing and enduring classical musicians of our era. Equally respected for her mastery of the standard repertoire and as a champion of new works, her recordings become benchmarks whether they feature the music of Beethoven, Brahms, Penderecki or Previn. She’s already performed 16 world premieres since the turn of the millennium (many of them her own commissions) with more on the way from Krzysztof Penderecki and Wolfgang Rihm. Although Mutter tours regularly as a solo guest artist with the world’s
leading orchestras and as a duo with pianist Lambert Orkis (a 25-year musical partnership), West Coast orchestra appearances are infrequent enough to be viewed as major events on the music calendar. Her last performances with the San Francisco Symphony were five years ago for the US premiere of Sofia Gubaidulina’s Violin Concerto No. 2, In tempus praesens. Those concerts appeared on a number of Bay Area yearend top 10 lists, including my own. This month she returns to San Francisco to join Michael Tilson Thomas and the orchestra in performances of Brahms’ Violin concerto, which composer/pianist Hubert
Foss described as “the highest degree of perfection, the reconciling of the two opposite side of [Brahms’] creative mind – the lyrical and the constructive: Brahms the songwriter and Brahms the symphonist”. The Brahms Concerto has long been a specialty of Mutter’s: her 1981 recording of it with Herbert von Karajan remains a first choice for many music lovers. The San Francisco concerts will be unique for featuring the only performances of the Brahms concerto on her current tour, and Mutter will cede the spotlight to her protégé,Ye-Eun Choi, recipient of the 2013 European Culture Award For New Artists, on March 1. sfsymphony.org
Emirates began non-stop daily service to San Francisco in 2008. In 2011, Emirates became a sponsor of the renowned San Francisco Symphony. In 2014, the daily flight to San Francisco was upgraded to an Airbus A380.
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IMAGE: GETTy IMAGES
MARK RUDIO, FOUNDER OF AWARD-WINNING SAN FRANCISCO MUSIC BLOG A BEAST IN THE JUNGLE, LOOKS FORWARD TO VIOLINIST ANNE-SOPHIE MUTTER’S PERFORMANCES IN SAN FRANCISCO THIS MONTH