East Meets West

The German violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter has consistently championed contemporary composers, and East meets West is the first in a projected series of albums featuring works which she has personally commissioned. It opens boldly with Likoo, a soul-searching piece for solo violin by the Iranian-Dutch composer Aftab Darvishi. Mutter brings her customary emotional intensity to bear to its keening glissandos, distilling an air of sorrowful melancholy. For South Korean composer Unsuk Chin’s Gran Cadenza, she is joined by fellow violinist Nancy Zhou, creating a spiky synergy in Chin’s sputteringly energetic writing. The spirit of Beethoven haunts Jörg Widmann’s Studie über Beethoven (String Quartet No. 6), where post-echoes of the Romantic composer’s string quartets are refracted and disrupted by Widmann’s more jagged modern idiom. Another composer from the past, Sibelius, is the point of reference in Thomas Adès’ Air — Homage to Sibelius, a single-movement work for violin and orchestra where Mutter’s rapt, singing tone in the upper registers of her instrument is a beguiling feature.