Anne-Sophie Mutter / Daniil Trifonov FRANZ SCHUBERT Trout Quintet

Mutter and Trifonov were drawn together by a strong artistic attraction. “It was a spontaneous idea to work together,” the violinist recalls. “But I was stalking Daniil for several years,” she adds with a laugh. Mutter found time earlier this year to follow the Russian pianist’s Rachmaninov concerto cycle with the Munich Philharmonic and Valery Gergiev. “I was also in Moscow when he won the Tchaikovsky Competition in 2011 and heard him play in the prize winners’ concert there.”

Anne-Sophie Mutter’s long-established recital partnership with Lambert Orkis is set to continue, yet she notes how she has often performed chamber music with other pianists, Alexis Weissenberg, André Previn and Yefim Bronfman among them. The opportunity to make her first recording of the “Trout” Quintet with Daniil Trifonov, she says, was too good to miss; the pianist, likewise, embraced the project with wholehearted enthusiasm. He sees Schubert, one of the great Classical composers, as an inventor of the purest melodies and a master of formal structure.

“The sincerity of his musical expression captivates audiences and performers alike,” notes Trifonov. “When I first learned that Anne-Sophie wanted to record this music, I was incredibly happy. I’ve only recorded Schubert in Liszt’s transcriptions of his songs before, so it was a great joy to work on one of the composer’s greatest works with four fantastic colleagues. The more we played together, the more possibilities opened up. Something different happened every time and that always expands your awareness of what is possible. And then you become more comfortable with an interpretation which reveals itself in the moment.”