Isabelle, L'après Midi

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

After a successful trilogy devoted to the concertos and trios of Schumann, Freiburger Barockorchester and Pablo Heras-Casado could not ignore one of Beethoven's most unusual works: the Triple Concerto. Alongside Isabelle Faust, Jean-Guihen Queyras and Alexander Melnikov, they bring this score to life as only true chamber musicians can, revealing it's subtlest colors and balances. The trio transcription of the Second Symphony, which was supervised by the composer himself, judiciously completes this exploration of lesser-known Beethoven, in which intimacy mingles with grandeur.

These performances are absolutely stunning, so much so that a reappraisal of Schumann’s Violin sonatas is in order. What once sounded like pre-Brahmsian music (as presented by Ara Malikian and Serouj Kradjian on Hänssler Classic), with its harmonic exploration and varied moods, is here revealed as the full-bodied passion of Schumann at his most impetuous. (It’s interesting to note that these two women–violinist Isabelle Faust and pianist Silke Avenhaus–come up with far more aggressive and masculine interpretations than do the two men on the Hänssler disc.)

Isabelle Faust is one of my favorite violinists. She puts her heart and soul into everything she plays. The unusual and varied set of works on this recording display her gifts to an almost sublime degree of excellence and execution. She knows how to "get into" the music and make it speak. I value this selection because of its variety and recommend it to anyone with a sense of adventure beyond the traditional norms, of which she is also quite able, as witnessed by this recording. She is, quite simply put, an outstanding talent and this recording shows her admirable abilities completely and well.

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.