Isabelle Faust

Isabelle Faust captivates her audience with her compelling interpretations. She dives deep into every piece considering the musical historical context, historically appropriate instruments and the greatest possible authenticity according to a contemporary state of knowledge. Thus, she manages to constantly illuminate and passionately perform the repertoire of a wide variety of composers.

After winning the renowned Leopold Mozart Competition and the Paganini Competition at a very young age, she soon gave regular performances with the world’s major orchestras including the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the NHK Symphony Orchestra Tokyo, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, the Freiburger Barockorchester and Les Siècles. This led to close and sustained cooperation with conductors like Giovanni Antonini, François-Xavier Roth, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Daniel Harding, Philippe Herreweghe, Jakub Hrůša, Klaus Mäkelä, Robin Ticciati oder Sir Simon Rattle.

Isabelle Faust’s vast artistic curiosity includes all eras and forms of instrumental cooperation. Thus, she never considers music as an end in itself but rather advances the piece’s essence in a devoted, subtle and conscientious way. In addition to big symphonic violin concertos this includes for instance Schubert’s octet with historical instruments as well as György Kurtág’s ‘Kafka Fragments’ with Anna Prohaska or Igor Stravinsky’s ‘L’Histoire du Soldat’ with Dominique Horwitz. With great commitment she renders an outstanding service to the performance of contemporary music, recent world premieres include works by Peter Eötvös, Brett Dean and Ondřej Adámek.

Numerous recordings have been unanimously praised by critics and awarded the Diapason d’or, the Grammophone Award, the Choc de l’année and other prizes. The most recent recordings include Arnold Schönberg’s Violin Concerto with Daniel Harding and the Swedish Radio symphony Orchestra, published in 2020, followed in 2021 by Ludwig van Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with Alexander Melnikov, Jean-Guihen Queyras, Pablo Heras-Casado and the Freiburger Barockorchester. Isabelle Faust presented further popular recordings among others of the Sonatas and Partitas for violin solo by Johann Sebastian Bach as well as Violin Concertos by Ludwig van Beethoven and Alban Berg under the direction of Claudio Abbado. She shares a long- standing chamber music partnership with the pianist Alexander Melnikov. Among others, joint recordings with Sonatas for Piano and Violin by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven and Johannes Brahms have been released.