Brahms Double Concerto / Schumann Piano Trio CD

Release Date: November 4, 2022

CD Edition

An aristocrat of the string world is joined by one of its most cherished newcomers for this major new concert release on Sony Classical.

Anne-Sophie Mutter is joined by her protégé and fellow Sony Classical artist, cellist Pablo Ferrández, for this new recording of Brahms’ bijoux Double Concerto and Clara Schumann’s unjustly neglected Piano Trio.

Ferrández, who released his debut album on Sony Classical in 2021 to critical acclaim, was also a member of Anne-Sophie Mutter’s hand-picked ensemble, Mutter’s Virtuosi. He has since gone on to win an Opus Klassik award and embark on a major solo career, all while continuing his association with his mentor.

Violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, one of the classical music world’s greats since her childhood collaborations with Hebert von Karajan (with whom she recorded her first Brahms Double Concerto in 1983), needs no introduction. Alongside her superlative musicianship and prestige, she has always sought to help and support new generations of string players, and to advance her own communicative ability through the violin.

In January 2022, Anne-Sophie Mutter and Pablo Ferrández recorded Brahms’ Double Concerto live in Prague with the great Czech Philharmonic under Manfred Honeck, following exciting collaborations on the same work in Madrid and Oxford.

The concerto is a chamber work with symphonic impact: a piece built on confrontation at the heart of which is the most beautiful expression of love from musicians entwined in an embrace. From the collaboration with Pablo Ferrández, Anne-Sophie Mutter experienced a “fresh, open and new” artistic partnership from a musician who, in her opinion, is “at the forefront” of the new generation of cellists.

Artistically inseparable from Johannes Brahms, Clara Schumann was a female composer in a man’s world and has often been overlooked. “They both adored each other artistically and Johannes Brahms often asked her for advice,” Anne-Sophie Mutter stated. Their human and artistic relationship connected and inspired them. For Anne-Sophie Mutter, diversity also played an important role in the selection of repertoire to also highlight a female composer forgotten by music history. Clara Schumann’s Piano Trio from 1846 is one of her finest works, a piece full of turbulence, complexity, and deep longing that drove Anne-Sophie Mutter and her regular piano partner Lambert Orkis, in particular, to unprecedented depths of musical conversation.

The interpretation captured here in the Munich studio is unlike any other recorded in its approach to the individuality of Clara Schumann’s spirit and musicianship.

“I am inspired to have such a musical conversation with Pablo,” says Anne-Sophie Mutter about her work with Pablo Ferrández.

“Mutter is the ideal artist,” says Pablo Ferrández. “There’s always an idea behind her playing, everything happens for a reason. It is an honor not only to play and record with her, but simply to know her and to have her as a mentor.”