Isabelle Faust captivates her listeners 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.
At an early age, Isabelle Faust won the prestigious Leopold Mozart and Paganini competitions and was soon invited to appear with the world’s leading orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, NHK Symphony Orchestra Tokyo, Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. This led to close and sustained cooperation with conductors such as Claudio Abbado, Giovanni Antonini, Frans Brüggen, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Bernard Haitink, Daniel Harding, Philippe Herreweghe, Andris Nelsons, and Robin Ticciati.
Faust’s vast artistic curiosity encompasses all eras and forms of instrumental collaboration, performing a wide-ranging repertoire from J.S. Bach to contemporary composers such as Ligeti, Lachenmann, and Widmann. To highlight this versatility, in addition to her mastery of the great symphonic violin concertos, she also performs works such as Kurtág’s “Kafka Fragments” with soprano Anna Prohaska, Stravinsky’s “L’Histoire du soldat,” or Schubert’s octet on historical instruments, for instance. She will premiere several new works for violin and orchestra in the coming seasons, including concertos by composers Péter Eötvös, Brett Dean, Ondřej Adámek, and Oscar Strasnoy.
A prolific recording artist, Isabelle Faust has a large discography and her critically acclaimed recordings have received the Gramophone award, the Diapason d’or, the Choc de l’année, and other prizes. Her most recent recordings include Bach’s violin concertos with the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin and Mendelssohn’s violin concerto with the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra conducted by Pablo Heras-Casado. Her album of Bach’s harpsichord sonatas with Kristian Bezuidenhout was released in March 2018. Other notable recordings include Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas, and Beethoven’s and Berg’s violin concertos with Claudio Abbado and the Orchestra Mozart. Faust shares a longstanding recital partnership with pianist Alexander Melnikov, with whom she has recorded many discs for harmonia mundi including sonatas for violin and piano by Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms, among other chamber recordings.
During the 2019/20 season, Isabelle Faust is Artist in Residence at the Royal Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Philharmonie Essen, Centro Nacional de Difusión Musical Madrid, and Philharmonie de Luxembourg.
