Faust Anne Imhof

Johann Sebastian Bach and the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin go back a long way together! This recording, made with the welcome participation of Isabelle Faust and Antoine Tamestit, follows the complete violin concertos (2019), which left a lasting impression. Returning regularly to the inexhaustible source of the Brandenburgs ever since a memorable first recording in the late 1990s, the Berlin musicians have achieved a sovereign mastery of what is not a single work, but six, which, under their fingers, are successive episodes of a piece of musical theatre in love with dance, transparent sound and freedom. An exhilarating experience!

The members of Faust are the jokers in the Krautrock pack – jokers because they never formed with any serious intentions, and jokers, too, because whatever preconceptions you might have in approaching that most disreputable-sounding of sonic genres, Faust is guaranteed to explode them…

After last year's 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.

First available as part of the box set 1971-1974, Momentaufnahme II gathers non-album material recorded by German art rock legends Faust during their original run. Mixing raw fragments with studio experiments and freewheeling jams, both Momentaufnahme volumes are closer in spirit to the logic-defying collage of The Faust Tapes than the band's other albums from the time period, offering a peek behind the curtain at the group's creative process while functioning as stand-alone artistic statements. "Gegensprechanlage" laces a broken jazz-rock groove with brittle, fizzling electronics that eventually take over the track, though the rhythm faintly bleeds through in the background. "Tête-à-Tête im Schredder" starts out as heavy and abrasive psych-rock, then shifts reality with proto-dub studio trickery.

Originally part of 2021’s Faust Box Set release commemorating the bands 50th anniversary Momentaufnahme I and II are now set for their own stand alone release by popular demand. This is for all those that missed out on the limited edition box set release. They collect together music recorded at the band's studio - a converted schoolhouse in rural Wümme between 1971 and 1974 in a similar vein to the way in which 'The Faust Tapes’ (released in 1973) was assembled. These two albums range from minimal electronic pulses, ambient dreamscapes, vocal collages to heavy drone, ritualistic percussion and psychedelic grooves. Highlights include the hypnotic space jams of ‘Vorsatz’ and ‘Rückwärts Durch Die Drehtür’, the delicate acoustics of ‘I Am… An Artist' and the radiophonic workship-esq 'Weird Sounds Sound Bizarre‘.

Isabelle Faust plays Bartok like a wonder-struck explorer confronting new terrains. She wrestles triumphantly with the First Violin Sonata's knotty solo writing, reduces her tone to a whisper for the more mysterious passages, employs a wide range of tonal colours and trans forms the finale's opening bars into a fearless war dance. This is cerebral music with a heart of fire and will brook no interpretative compromises: you either take it on its own terms, or opt for something milder.

For her first collaboration with the period ensemble Il Giardino Armonico, violinist Isabelle Faust performs the five Violin Concertos of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, along with three shorter concertante works. This is an extraordinary set, for the historically informed performances, the polished sound of the group, the almost palpable presence of the players, which Harmonia Mundi has captured with superior engineering, and for the unrepressed joy in the music. Faust is the center of attention, naturally, and her refined and expressive playing immediately pulls the listener in. These are far from the most demanding concertos in the repertoire, so Faust is less concerned with technical execution than with conveying the pure feeling of the music, which is delightfully buoyant and uplifting. Under the direction of Giovanni Antonini, the group provides warm and sparkling accompaniment that gives Faust all the support she needs, but there's no doubt that she sets the emotional tone for these exquisite recordings. Highly recommended, especially for devotees of Classical style at its finest.

Born in Prague in 1979, the composer, conductor and chorus master Ondrej Adámek, who studied in his Czech hometown and in Paris, has already won numerous prestigious awards for his orchestral, chamber, vocal and electro-acoustic music. In his musical language, which also repeatedly incorporates elements of distant cultures, he creates unusual musical narratives. He seeks the authenticity of his interpretations by combining voices and movements, gestures and theatricality, phonetic and semantic aspects, and his own specially developed musical instruments.