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Beethoven Violin Concerto // Isabelle Faust with the Berliner Philharmoniker

“Her sound has passion, grit and electricity but also a disarming warmth and sweetness that can unveil the music’s hidden strains of lyricism…”

The New York Times

“Even better was the brief slow movement, in which the throb of her silken tone and long-breathed phrasing honored the music’s tender romantic sensibility. She dispatched the bravura pages with spot-on digital marksmanship calculated to call attention to the music rather than to herself. In short, she made Schumann’s problematic opus succeed despite itself.”

Chicago Tribune

“Faust, by contrast, was perfectly precise but ­wholly organic. Her sound had the complexity not of a machine’s cogs but of the jagged edge of a plant’s leaf, perfectly formed yet subject to ­natural forces — tugs at individual phrases, like gentle breezes, distinguishing one statement from ­another ­without a pause in velocity.”

Washington Post

“The stillness of focus and purity of sound that has distinguished her playing can be heard in a ­repertoire stretching from Beethoven and Schubert through to Hartmann and Ligeti, on modern and period strings. Where other violinists dazzle, Faust is a thinker.”

The Guardian

Isabelle Faust captivates audiences through her insightful and faithful interpretations, based on a thorough knowledge of the historical context of the works as well as her attention to current scholarship, bringing illumination and passion to her performances in repertoire by a wide range of composers.

After winning the renowned Leopold Mozart Competition and the Paganini Competition at a very young age, she soon began to perform regularly with the world’s major orchestras including the Berlin Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Les Siècles, and the Baroque Orchestra Freiburg.

This led to close and sustained collaborations with conductors such as Andris Nelsons, Giovanni Antonini, François-Xavier Roth, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Daniel Harding, Philippe Herreweghe, Jakub Hrusa, Klaus Mäkelä, Robin Ticciati, and Sir Simon Rattle.

Isabelle Faust’s vast artistic curiosity embraces all eras and forms of instrumental collaboration. In addition to the big symphonic violin concertos, her repertoire includes for instance Schubert’s Octet with historical instruments, Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat with Dominique Horwitz, or Kurtág’s Kafka Fragments with Anna Prohaska. With great commitment she renders an outstanding service to the performance of contemporary music. Recent world premieres include works by Péter Eötvös, Brett Dean, Ondřej Adámek, and Rune Glerup.

Highlights of the 2024/25 season include performances with the Boston Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, and the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich. She tours with Il Giardino Armonico in Europe and in Japan. Isabelle Faust is Artist in Residence at the Beethovenfest Bonn 2024.

Faust shares a long-standing chamber music partnership with the pianist Alexander Melnikov, as well as in trios with Tabea Zimmermann and Jean-Guihen Queyras. Faust and Melnikov have released joint recordings of sonatas for piano and violin by Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms, among others. Her chamber collaborations also include historical interpretations of Schubert’s string quintet and his string quartet in G major with Antoine Tamestit, Anne Katharina Schreiber, Jean-Guihen Queyras and Christian Poltéra.

Isabelle Faust’s numerous and prolific recordings have been unanimously praised by critics and awarded the Diapason d’or, the Gramophone Award, the Choc de l’année, and other prizes. She was named Instrumentalist of the Year by Opus Klassik in 2024. Recent recordings include Britten’s Violin Concerto with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, works for violin and orchestra by Pietro Locatelli with Il Giardino Armonico, and works for solo violin by Biber, Matteis, Pisendel, Vilsmayr, and Guillemain. She has also made popular recordings of Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas, as well as violin concertos by Beethoven and Berg under the direction of Claudio Abbado.

NOVEMBER 2024

01.01.19

Best of 2018