Violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter Returning to Sydney

Regarded as one of the greatest virtuosos the world has ever seen, violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter will make her much-anticipated return to Sydney this month to perform three concerts with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. It seems the violinist can't get enough of the city and it's Orchestra, with these concerts marking Mutter's third visit to Sydney since her spectacular sold-out debut with the SSO in 2012.

"When I first played here I totally fell in love with the audience," said Mutter of her 2012 debut with the SSO. "I just wondered where I had been all these years. How could I have survived without this brilliant audience I didn't know?"

Mutter will perform Dvor?a?k's Violin Concerto, a work she recently recorded with the Berlin Philharmonic, on her precious Stradivarius violin in three gala performances presented by Premier Partner Credit Suisse.

Mutter advises audience-goers to listen out for the 'extremely exposed coloratura' at the beginning of the work: "This concerto is one of a kind... [the opening] is probably the reason it is performed rarely - only a violinist without vertigo can survive it."

Mutter has been a classical music phenomenon since making her international debut at the age of 13 at the Lucerne Festival. There, she was spotted by famed conductor Herbert von Karajan who invited her to perform with him and the Berlin Philharmonic a year later at the Salzburg Festival, thrusting her into the limelight and the birth of a stellar career.

Mutter was born in the German town of Rheinfelden in 1963 and it was soon clear that she possessed an extraordinary talent.

She won the National Music Prize at six and was given an exemption from school to concentrate on music. By the age of nine she was a full-time student at the Winterthur Conservatorium under the tuition of Aida Stucki.

Since the time of her international debut in 1976, Mutter has gone on to perform with all of the world's leading orchestras in all the major concert halls across the globe.

In addition to her performing career, Mutter devotes much of her time to supporting charitable causes and the development of young musicians. In 2008 she established the Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation to further increase worldwide support for promising young musicians.

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