Anne-Sophie Mutter – The Club Concert

For a change, rather than standing on stage in one of the worlds renowned grand concert halls, Anne-Sophie Mutter spent two evenings playing in a tiny graffiti-scrawled nightclub in the Friedrichshain district of Berlin, jam-packed with hip young people. “I definitely wanted to put the audience in touch with the music I love and believe in, music that packs such a huge emotional punch. An audience which I’ll never find in the Philharmonie. So I thought to myself: If there’s a bunch of people who will never go to the Philharmonie, I’ll have to go to them”. Accompanied by pianist Lambert Orkis, Mahan Esfahani and her own Virtuosi - young scholarship holders from her foundation - Mutter performed works ranging from the Baroque to the present day - from J.S. Bach and Antonio Vivaldi (Four Seasons) to George Gershwin and John Williams. The music she otherwise plays behind a sort of cordon sanitaire in the world’s great concert halls acquired an incredible intensity, if only from her proximity to the listeners. The audience, to Anne-Sophie Mutter’s great joy, was equally euphoric in ist response: “The applause was moving. I will always cherish the enthusiasm of the audience in these intimate club appearances.”