Anne-Sophie Mutter Celebrates 50 Years on Stage with New Album

Star violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter is marking five decades on the world's concert stages with an ambitious new recording project titled ASM Forte Forward, released on the Alpha Classics label. The first album in the series, East meets West, gathers more than 30 works dedicated to or commissioned by Mutter, many of them never previously recorded.

A Musical Monument to Women's Freedom

The album opens with Likoo for Solo Violin, composed in 2024 by Iranian-Dutch composer Aftab Darvishi. The piece is a lament about loss, written at a time when women in Iran were rising up against the repressive regime. Mutter told DW: "I wanted to create a musical monument for the people of Iran and for all those who fight for freedom, coexistence, empathy, and equality — in the hope that these terrible atrocities will not be repeated. And while I play, wars rage on our wonderful planet, but I do not give up hope for love and empathy."

East Meets West: A Global Roster of Composers

The project also features a work by South Korean composer Unsuk Chin and reflects Mutter's long history of commissioning music from a diverse range of voices — from Krzysztof Penderecki and Sofia Gubaidulina to André Previn and Jörg Widmann. Over her 50-year career, Mutter has redefined the role of the solo violinist as an advocate for living composers and global musical dialogue.