Isabelle Faust

Performer: Isabelle Faust
Orchestra: Mahler Chamber Orchestra
Conductor: Daniel Harding
Composer: Johannes Brahms
Audio CD (March 8, 2011)
SPARS Code: DDD
Number of Discs: 1
Format: Import
Label: HARMONIA MUNDI
ASIN: B004DKDO2O
Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsA modern sensibility steeped in classical values
By Larry VanDeSande VINE VOICE on June 16, 2011
Format: Audio CD
German born violinist Isabelle Faust and conductor Daniel Harding, the pairing here in Brahms' famous Violin Concerto Op. 77, belong to the modern school of period-induced playing and conducting. My previous experience with Faust was as violinist on a recording of Brahms chamber music and I last met Harding when he conducted some Beethoven overtures. I liked neither recording as well as I like this classically-rendered version of the concerto.

Faust, who was a Gramophone young artist of the year in 1997 after the release of her first album, built her reputation pursuing chamber music, 20th century and and lesser-known repertory from the likes of Jolivet, Ligeti, Danielpour and the concertos of Michael Jarrell and Thomas Larcher that were dedicated to her. In the intervening years, she has gone on to record famous concertos by Bach, Dvorak and Beethoven.

The Brahms concerto transcends these great works because of its classic lines of construction expressed in musical language from the late romantic period. Brahms built a titanic first movement, followed by a heartfelt and melodious slow movement, and wrapped up the affair with a rondo-dance. While transferring the emotional volatility of late 19th century romance, his classical concerto eschews the excesses of Tchaikovsky and other late romantics.

A virtuoso of the first order playing a 1704 Stradivarius, Faust seems to understand this. With bowing and double stops that match any violinist alive today, she practices virtuosic and emotional restraint while matching her orchestral partners' dramatic sweep and tension in the 20-minute opening movement, then quietly settles into Brahms' self-defined 'feeble adagio' before sweeping away listeners with bravura playing in the Hungarian finale.

Using Ferrucio Busoni's first movement cadenza underlined by Harding's timpani, Faust is abetted by Harding and the 14-year-old Mahler Chamber Orchestra -- a modern period ensemble of about 40 players -- in a recording strong on orchestral clarity and power mated to vivid execution with solo work full of expressive character. While the Mahler Chamber Orchestra lacks the weight of a larger ensemble, and some listeners may not like all the sounds the horns make, they carry the argument splendidly in support of the soloist.

There are other versions of this concerto I enjoy -- Kennedy's indulgent version that stretches out the music 45 music and Heifitz's fiery virtuosity chief among them -- but none have the combination of expressive playing, clarity in execution and dramatic thrust this one demonstrates.

The significant add-on is Brahms Second Sextet for strings, Op. 36, a piece that projects more the autumnal resignation of his final symphony and Alto Rhapsody than the forward-stepping romance and triumph of the violin concerto. Faust leads from the violin in a reading that is, again, of 21st century sensibility while steeped in the classical (and traditional) values that make Brahms history's No. 4 classical composer behind only Beethoven, Bach and Mozart.

To hear one moment that envelops the sextet's enchanting playing and scintillating interpretation, listen to the way Faust et al handle the first movement's exposition subject on repeat, playing with tenderness and utter sensitivity to the changing moods of the piece, and hardly just playing the music that came a few minutes earlier. Even speeds a point or two faster than the norm do nothing to keep this performance from the first rank.

The CD version of this recording is handsomely packaged in a box, not a plastic case, the opens to a second set of foldouts containing the CD and the removable 42-page booklet. The latter contains an essay from Roman Hinke on the connection between Joseph Joachim and the Brahms concerto as well as three pages from Faust on her impressions of the music and why she chose Busoni's 1913 cadenza. The up close recording was made in Berlin in 2010.

In fine modern sound, Harmonia Mundi has created a 75-minute concert that Brahms lovers, whether wedded to the high cholesterol, big band oeuvre from the likes of Furtwangler, Karajan and Klemperer to the most modern school of playing, can enjoy equally. Only those unjustly averse to period style should avoid this exceptional chamber-sized issue.

Label:Harmonia Mundi
Catalogue No:HMC902075
Discs:1
Release date:28th Feb 2011
Barcode:0794881984428
Medium:CD

Brahms* – Isabelle Faust, Daniel Harding, Mahler Chamber Orchestra ?– Violin Concerto, String Sextet No. 2
Label: Harmonia Mundi ?– HMC 902075
Format: CD, Album
Country: France
Released: 2011
Genre: Classical
Style: Romantic

The booklet of Isabelle Faust’s new recording includes an essay written by her regarding the performing editions used and the significance of the violinist Joseph Joachim in the string works of Johannes Brahms, as seen from a performer’s point of view. Since Brahms did not belong to a generation of composers who mastered several different instruments – as had Bach or Mozart – and composed from the perspective of a pianist, his exchange of ideas with Joachim, which in the case of the Violin Concerto lasted almost a year, was of decisive importance for the final form of the piece, one of the most difficult in the repertoire. Isabelle uses the rarely played cadenza by Ferruccio Busoni, which dates from 1913. Brahms got to know Busoni as a child prodigy and recommended the young pianist in a number of artistic circles: ‘What Schumann did for me, I will do for Busoni.’ The spirit of Joseph Joachim also hovers over the second work on this recording, for the composer regarded the violinist as his most important adviser in the realm of chamber music too. In the case of his Sextet, however, the most perceptible influence is that of the doomed love affair between the composer and the soprano Agathe von Siebold. That Brahms was unable to overcome their separation with a light heart is clear from the monument in sound to his lost romance in the lyrical second theme of the first movement. ‘A-GA- D/H-E’1 proclaims the sequence of notes making up the motif (bars 162 ff). Isabelle generously credits Christopher Hogwood, Robert Pascall, Stefan Weymar and Douglas Woodfull-Harris for their active support in all questions relating to the manuscript and the first edition of Op.36 and for generously making available a prepublication copy of the new B?renreiter edition. Gramophone Magazine gave Isabelle Faust its Young Artist of the Year Award for her first recording of sonatas by Béla Bartók, in 1997 [now reissued on hm gold with volume 2].

The year 2010 marked a new stage in her recording career: Diapason voted her CD of Bach Partitas and Sonatas a Diapason d’Or of the Year, while her complete set of the Beethoven Sonatas with Alexander Melnikov, received the Gramophone Award for Best Chamber Recording. Composed of around 40 musicians from 20 different nations, and independent of external sponsorship, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra was founded in 1997 by the players themselves and Claudio Abbado. In 1998, at the age of 22, Daniel Harding became Principal Guest Conductor; in 2003 he was named Music Director and he has served as Principal Conductor since 2008, conducting around a quarter of the orchestra’s projects each season. He is also Music Director of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Principal Guest Conductor of the LSO and Music Partner of the New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra.

“a poetic player with an irresistibly warm sound, a tightly controlled vibrato and an athletic technique.' BBC Music Magazine