____________________________________________________

Sir Georg Solti introduced a number of up-and-coming artists to Chicago audiences, including seventeen-year-old Anne-Sophie Mutter in October 1980. She was a replacement for the originally scheduled Leonid Kogan.

According to her biography in the program book, Mutter had made her U.S. debut with Zubin Mehta and the New York Philharmonic in January 1980, performing Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto. Two weeks later, she appeared with the National Symphony Orchestra in Mozart’s Third Violin Concerto with Mstislav Rostropovich conducting.

For her Chicago Symphony Orchestra debut, Mutter performed Beethoven’s Romance in G major and Mozart’s Third Violin Concerto. Reviews of the performances, concentrating primarily on Sir Georg’s account of Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony, are here, here, here, and here.

Mutter appeared twice more with the CSO under Solti’s baton: on January 12 (special University Night concert), 13, 14, and 15, 1983, in Mozart’s Fourth Violin Concerto; and on May 11, 12, and 13, 1989, in Beethoven’s Violin Concerto.