Isabelle Faust

Claudio Abbado and his hand-picked Orchestra Mozart have become famous for their exceptional recordings of music by their namesake, but to assume every work in their repertoire has a Koechel number attached to it would be a mistake. For this 2012 release, it demonstrates a great aptitude for the violin concertos of Ludwig van Beethoven and Alban Berg, and the playing is every bit as convincing as the treatment of Mozart's oeuvre.

Isabelle Faust has gone back to the original manuscript sources to offer us her version of a masterpiece of the violin repertoire. In Bach’s time, music for solo instruments was still little explored territory, and his sonatas, partitas and suites immediately established themselves as a benchmark, technically challenging and brimming with creativity. Isabelle’s previous recording was our best selling title over the Christmas period.

Isabelle Faust's first recording for harmonia mundi, Bartok Sonatas, won her a Gramophone Young Artist of the Year. Here she returns to Bartok, perfoming the two concertos, accompanied by Daniel Harding and the Swedish Radio SO.

Isabelle Faust hit the Classical charts earlier this year with her mesmerising recording of Beethoven and Berg with Claudio Abbado. She followed up with some welcome live appearances here in the UK, which included the Brahms' concerto at the Barbican with frequent collaborators Jiri Belohlavek and the BBCSO.

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!