East Meets West is a landmark album in Anne-Sophie Mutter’s long career as a champion of living composers. A collection of four works, all commissioned by and dedicated to her, by composers who inhabit the intersection between Western classical tradition and musical cultures further afield.

Aftab Darvishi’s Likoo for solo violin draws on Persian musical heritage; Unsuk Chin’s Gran Cadenza for two violins (performed here with Ye-Eun Choi) weaves Korean sensibility into complex, stratospheric writing.

Jörg Widmann’s Studie über Beethoven — a full string quartet — dissects and reimagines Beethoven through the lens of a composer equally at home in jazz and the contemporary avant-garde. Thomas Adès’s Air for violin and orchestra pays homage to Sibelius in its most translucent, northern-light vein.

All four works received their world premieres in Mutter’s hands — from Carnegie Hall to Lucerne — and this recording captures them at the height of their first life in her repertoire. The album is a testament to a unique relationship between a great performer and the composers of her generation: not merely a commissioner of new music, but its truest advocate.

Anne-Sophie Mutter, Violin
Ye-Eun Choi, Violin (Track 2)
Ye-Eun Choi, Vladimir Babeshko, Daniel Müller-Schott, String Quartet (Tracks 3–13)