In September 2019, in the middle of the Beethoven Violin Concerto in Cincinnati, Anne-Sophie Mutter stopped playing and confronted an audience member filming her on a phone. This episode uses that moment as the entry point into the life of a violinist who won a national prize after one year of lessons at six, left school at 13, and was taken up by Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic as a teenager.

The conversation explores how she avoided the child-star trap, why critics have called her mature playing both multicolored and overly micromanaged, and the practical acoustic reason behind her signature strapless gowns. It covers her turn toward commissioning living composers such as Lutoslawski, Penderecki, Rihm, André Previn, and John Williams, the loss of her first husband Detlef Wunderlich to cancer in 1995, her grief-stricken 199 ...