Anne Sophie Mutter, Berliner Philharmoniker, Manfred Honeck Dvorak: Violin Concerto, Romance, Mazurek (2013) (repost)

In the Double Concerto Mutter is joined by a young Brazilian cellist, still in his twenties, named Antonio Meneses, another Karajan protege, I suspect, whose career didn't soar like Mutter's. It's touching that a grand maestro should give the spotlight over to two young colleagues. Meneses is unusually lyrical and rhapsodist in the cello part, plaing with chamber-music sensitivity and gorgeous tone (amplified out of porportion by DG's engineers, as is typical in this work). Mutter matches Meneses in sensitivity; overall the performance is slow and inward, perhaps too much so for its own good.

When she was a fresh 15-year-old violinist in 1978, Anne-Sophie Mutter made her recording debut with a coupling of Mozart's Third and Fifth Violin Concertos with Herbert von Karajan conducting the Berlin Philharmonic. Now as an accomplished 42-year-old virtuoso in 2003, Mutter has recorded all five of Mozart's violin concertos plus his Sinfonia Concertante with herself conducting the London Philharmonic.

In May of 2015, violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter gave a truly unique concert: rather than standing on stage in one of the world’s renowned well-tempered grand concert halls, she spent two evenings playing in a tiny graffiti-scrawled nightclub in Berlin. Recorded in front of a standing-room only audience, this new release includes popular works by Bach, Copland, Gershwin, Tchaikovsky, Vivaldi and many more. Mutter is joined by Mahan Esfahani, Lambert Orkis and the Mutter Virtuosi.