About this Artist
Violinist 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. 2016 marked her first year as Artistic Partner for the Mahler Chamber Orchestra.
In the 2017/18 season, Faust’s North American engagements include the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (debut), The Cleveland Orchestra, and a U.S. tour with Les Violons du Roy which includes concerts at Los Angeles’ Walt Disney Concert Hall, Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center, and New York’s Carnegie Hall.
Isabelle Faust performs 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, Faust also performs works such as Kurtág’s Kafka Fragments with soprano Anna Prohaska, or Schubert’s octet on historical instruments. She will premiere several new works for violin and orchestra during the next seasons, including concerti by composers Ondrej Adamek, Marco Stroppa, Oscar Strasnoy, and Beat Furrer.
Over the course of her career, Isabelle Faust has regularly performed or recorded with world-renowned conductors including John Eliot Gardiner, Philippe Herreweghe, Daniel Harding, Bernard Haitink, and Andris Nelsons. In more recent years, Faust developed a close relationship with the late Claudio Abbado and performed and recorded under his baton. Their recording of Beethoven’s and Berg’s violin concertos with the Orchestra Mozart received the Diapason d’or (France), Echo Klassik prize (Germany), 2012 Gramophone Award (UK), as well as a Record Academy Award (Japan).
Faust has recorded many discs for harmonia mundi with her recital partner Alexander Melnikov. These include their recent albums of the Brahms Sonatas for violin and piano, Schumann’s piano trios, as well as Chausson’s Concerto for Violin, Piano and String Quartet which was released in May 2017. Other releases include the Mozart Violin Concertos with Il Giardino Armonico (October 2016), Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra and Pablo Heras-Casado (September 2017), and her latest recording, Bach’s violin and harpsichord sonatas with Kristian Bezuidenhout, released in January 2018.