Anna Prohaska & Isabelle Faust
Biography Anna Prohaska & Isabelle Faust
Anna Prohaska
At 20 years of age Anna Prohaska made her debut at the Berlin Staatsoper Unter den Linden, her artistic home. Since then she has remained an ensemble member adjacent to her international career, working with conductors such as Daniel Barenboim, Philippe Jordan and Simon Rattle. Anna Prohaska has proven extraordinary versatility in any repertoire from Monteverdi to world premieres. Soon she ventured out to other stages such as La Scala di Milano, the Bolshoi Theatre, De Nationale Opera Amsterdam, the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden or the Paris Opera.
Since 2008 Anna is a regular guest at the Salzburg Festival and after having made role debuts as Zerlina, Despina and Deola in Luigi Nonos Al Gran Sole, Carico d’Amore she sang Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro in 2016 and Cordelia in Reimann’s Lear in 2017. Apart from having sung Blonde, Adele and in Rameau’s Les Indes Galantes, Jörg Widmann dedicated the role of Inanna to her in his opera Babylon, conducted by Kent Nagano in 2012.
She is in demand at the leading concert venues of the world which have brought her to the Cleveland Orchestra, LA Philharmonic and Boston Symphony Orchestras, the NHK Symphony Orchestra Tokyo, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Wiener and Berliner Philharmoniker and to the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Claudio Abbado, Franz Welser-Möst, Herbert Blomstedt, Pierre Boulez, Daniel Harding, Mariss Jansons, Yannick Nézét-Séguin, Gustavo Dudamel or Mariss Jansons.
Anna Prohaska is passionately dedicated to historical performance practise, often having sung with Nicolaus Harnoncourt and his Concentus Musicus, the Academy of Ancient Music, the Freiburger Barockorchester or the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin.
The season of 17/18 brings Anna Prohaska back to Theater an der Wien for Claus Guth’s new production of Handel’s Saul and to the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden for her role debut as Nannetta in Verdi’s Falstaff. At her Berlin artistic home, the newly reopened Staatsoper Unter den Linden, she will be premiering the title role in Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea and also performing Debussy oratorios in Berlin and the Vienna Musikverein with the Staatskapelle Berlin and Daniel Barenboim. After having sung at the opening concerts of the new Pierre Boulez Saal, she will fulfil a life-long dream of performing Schönberg’s Pierrot Lunaire under the baton of Zubin Mehta with Daniel Barenboim at the piano.
Anna Prohaska is often invited to the centres of art song like the Schubertiade Schwarzenberg, the Wigmore Hall, to Wien oder Berlin. In 2018, marking the centennial of the end of the First World War, she will tour her „Behind the Lines“ programme including venues such as the the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie.
As an exclusive artist of the Deutschen Grammophon she released numerous solo recitals and operas winning various awards like the ECHO Klassik. Her most recent album Serpent & Fire: Arias for Dido and Cleopatra (2016 by alpha) with Il Giardino Armonico and Giovanni Antonini entered the top of the German classical music charts immediately after release.
Isabelle Faust
“But performing music out of intimacy also characterises Isabelle Faust's playing. The exploration of depths and beauty on the basis of an almost eternal breath is enchanting and affects the audience. She shows how rich simplicity can be." (Maximilian Maier, Münchner Merkur, May 2022)
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, Boston Symphony Orchestra, NHK Symphony Orchestra Tokyo, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Les Siècles and the Baroque Orchestra Freiburg.
This led to close and sustained cooperation with conductors like Andris Nelsons, Giovanni Antonini, François-Xavier Roth, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Daniel Harding, Philippe Herreweghe, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Klaus Mäkelä 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 Stravinsky’s "L’Histoire du Soldat" with Dominique Horwitz or Kurtág’s "Kafka Fragments". With great commitment she renders an outstanding service to the performance of contemporary music, recent world premieres include works by Péter Eötvös, Brett Dean, Ondřej Adámek and Rune Glerup.
Highlights in the 2022/23 season include concerts with the Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Symphony, Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, Baroque Orchestra Freiburg, WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne, as well as tours with Il Giardino Armonico, the English Baroque Solists, AKAMUS Berlin, Basel Chamber Orchestra, Mahler Chamber Orchestra and the Orchestre des Champs-Elysées.
Chamber music engagements comprise collaborations with Sol Gabetta, Jean-Guihen Queyras, Antoine Tamestit, Jörg Widmann, Alexander Melnikov and Pierre-Laurent Aimard. This exciting season is completed by solo concerts and Kurtág's "Kafka Fragments" with Anna Prohaska at the Musikverein Vienna.
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 Schoenberg’s Violin Concerto under the baton of Daniel Harding and with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, as well as Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with Alexander Melnikov, Jean-Guihen Queyras, Pablo Heras-Casado and the Freiburger Barockorchester. 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 and Johannes Brahms have been released.
