Faust Anne Imhof

In his Piano Quartet and Quintet, Schumann revisited the frameworks inherited from Schubert and Beethoven to create astonishingly innovative structures. Their grandiose musical and emotional gestures place these works among his supreme achievements. The prestigious artists assembled here, with their extensive experience of performing Schumann’s chamber music and concertos, do full justice to his imaginative world.

This live recording was made at the Royal Albert Hall during one of London’s famous Promenade Concert seasons. Sir Georg Solti conducts the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in a magnifi cent performance of Berlioz’s concert cantata La Damnation de Faust. This feast of Berlioz launched Solti’s farewell tour with the orchestra he had directed for twenty years and was described by The Times as “the unsurpassable culmination of two decades of music-making…one that summarised all that has been most admirable about Solti’s long reign in Chicago.”

Almost forty years separate Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) from the Violin Concerto - the former still influenced by the idiom of Brahms and Wagner, the latter deriving from the richness of that later period when Schoenberg managed to combine a multiplicity of approaches within his twelve-note system. Between post-Romantic twilight and 'classical' rigor, Isabelle Faust and company offer us an extraordinarily lively interpretation of some of the most remarkable pages in twentieth-century musical literature.

In his Piano Quartet and Quintet, Schumann revisited the frameworks inherited from Schubert and Beethoven to create astonishingly innovative structures. Their grandiose musical and emotional gestures place these works among his supreme achievements. The prestigious artists assembled here, with their extensive experience of performing Schumann’s chamber music and concertos, do full justice to his imaginative world.

After the overwhelming success of last years 1971-74 box set release, containing the first four studio albums and for the first time ever this lost 'last' album recording, 'Punkt' gets a deserved and necessary stand alone release to the relief of fans and collectors and the undoubted future gratification of those yet to experience the magic in these recordings.

Considered by many music historians as one of the most important group out of Germany, Faust were certainly ahead of their time. They took their music to unsuspecting heights somewhere in between Can, Velvet Underground, Neu, LA Dusseldorf or Henry Cow but also much farther and can be considered as founding fathers of the Industrial Rock. Having made their debut in 71 in Hamburg, Faust will never stop their groundbreaking and will be always one step ahead of everybody else including the groups above mentioned and are the prime example of Rock In Opposition (RIO) along with Henry Cow. Faust is definitely not for the faint-hearted person and can only be recommended in small doses because it is very dangerous for the sanity of the average proghead.

Few violinists can move between a modern instrument and a period one with such ease—not to mention with such an idiomatic approach to so many styles of music—as Isabelle Faust. Following her award-winning set of the Mozart violin concertos, the German is joined by the ever-stylish keyboard player Kristian Bezuidenhout for Bach’s sonatas for violin and harpsichord. Both instruments sound magnificent, and these two great players bring breathtaking invention and imagination to the six sonatas. The humanity and warmth of Bach’s music is extraordinary, especially when played with the passion and flair encountered here.

From Biber’s famous ‘Guardian Angel’ Passacaglia to Guillemain’s ‘Amusements’ and sonatas and fantasias by Matteis (father and son), Pisendel and Vilsmayr, Isabelle Faust offers us a panorama of European music for unaccompanied violin from the second half of the Baroque era. Dreamy or virtuosic, these pieces bear witness to the diversity of inspirations from Italy, France, England and the German-speaking countries - and to their marvellous intermingling echoes.

After Berg, Schoenberg, Bartók and Stravinsky, Isabelle Faust now tackles Britten with Jakub Hrůša and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, revealing a little-known facet of the British composer. This concerto, highly personal in its language, combines drama with humour, seriousness with satire, in music of overwhelming emotional depth. The programme is completed by early chamber works.