Isabelle Faust

Isabelle Faust captivates her audience with her compelling interpretations. She dives deep into

every piece considering the musical historical context, historically appropriate instruments and

the greatest possible authenticity according to a contemporary state of knowledge. Thus, she

manages to constantly illuminate and passionately perform the repertoire of a wide variety of

composers.

After winning the renowned Leopold Mozart Competition and the Paganini Competition at a very young age, she soon gave regular performances with the world’s major orchestras including the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the NHK Symphony Orchestra Tokyo, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and the Baroque Orchestra Freiburg.

This led to close and sustained cooperation with conductors like Claudio Abbado, Giovanni

Antonini, Frans Brüggen, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Bernard Haitink, Daniel Harding, Philippe

Herreweghe, Andris Nelsons and Robin Ticciati.

Isabelle Faust’s vast artistic curosity includes all eras and forms of instrumental cooperation.

Thus she never considers music as an end in itself but rather advances the piece’s essence in a

devoted, subtle and conscientious way. In addition to big symphonic violin concertos this

includes for instance Schubert’s octet with historical instruments as well as György Kurtág’s

"Kafka Fragments" with Anna Prohaska or Igor Stravinsky’s "L’Histoire du Soldat" with Dominique Horwitz. With great commitment she renders an outstanding service to the performance of contemporary music. Premieres of Péter Eötvös, Brett Dean, Ondřej Adámek and Oscar Strasnoy are in preparation for the upcoming seasons.

Numerous recordings have been unanimously praised by critics and awarded the Diapason d’or,

the Grammophone Award, the Choc de l’année and other prizes. The most recent recordings

include Johann Sebastian Bach’s violin concertos with Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin and

Mendelssohn Bartholdy’s violin concerto with Freiburg Baroque Orchestra under the direction of

Pablo Heras-Casado. In 2018, a recording with sonatas for violin and harpsichord by Johann

Sebastian Bach was released, recorded with Kristian Bezuidenhout. Isabelle Faust presented

further popular recordings among others of the Sonatas and Partitas for violin solo by Johann Sebastian Bach as well as violin concertos by Ludwig van Beethoven and Alban Berg under the

direction of Claudio Abbado. She shares a long-standing chamber music partnership with the

pianist Alexander Melnikov. Among others, joint recordings with sonatas for piano and violin by

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven or Johannes Brahms have been released.

During the 2020/21 season Isabelle Faust is Artist in Residence at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in

Brussels.

As of March 2021