Hello, I'm Kirstie Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 1986 and the presenter was Michael Parkinson.

Our cast away today was once described as the Shirley Temple of Classical Music,

a tribute to her precocious musical talent, she was six at the time.

Today at the ripe old age of 23, she's acknowledged as one of the great violinists.

The conductor, Herbert van Carianne, once called her the greatest youthful musical talent since

a young menuine. She's Anne Sophie Mutter. And Sophie, welcome to our Desert Island.

What kind of background did you come from? Were your parents musical?

No, there was nobody in history of our family musician. My father is journalist and now editor

and my mother is just another. You know, the strange thing is I think there exists no explanation

why somebody starts to play. I mean, I was crazy at the age of five playing violin.

Maybe it was influence of some recordings I heard, but I just wanted for my fifth birthday to play

violin. In fact, you'll give me a piano, first of all, why should I play?

Exactly, yes, because my parents thought that I'm much too small to start the violin. At the

beginning it's a little bit more difficult because on the piano you already have notes.

And so I played half year piano and thank God I could change after that and could show my

parents that I really needed to play violin. Can you remember what you felt the first time you

picked a violin out? You know, I only remember that it was always very easy from the beginning on

and I just wanted to play. It was not working for me or practicing. It was just playing with

the instrument. Of course, I made a lot of, you know, not very nice tones and you know, screaming,

violin and that stuff. And I always had the feeling that I would hurt the violin and so I had a

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