Isabelle Faust, Orchestre de Paris & Pablo Heras-Casado
Biography Isabelle Faust, Orchestre de Paris & Pablo Heras-Casado
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.
„To fully appreciate such exquisite softness, such clarity wedded to such fragility, one needs to hear Faust live. Trust a listener who’s heard countless performances: this was Beethoven’s Violin Concerto as Cleveland rarely gets to hear it.” (Zachary Lewis, cleveland.com, February 2020)
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.
