Photo: Alvaro Yanez
Isabelle Faust
"Isabelle Faust makes another exciting foray into the 20th-century repertory (...). Her sound has passion, grit and electricity but also a disarming warmth and sweetness that can unveil the music's hidden strains of lyricism."
New York Times
Isabelle Faust is one of the most exciting musicians to have emerged in Europe in recent years, admired by audiences and experts alike for an extraordinary technical facility as well as a refined and mature musicianship.
She studied with Christoph Poppen and Denes Zsigmondy and won the international recognition at an early stage in her career, winning the "Leopold-Mozart-Competition" in 1987 and the "Premio Paganini" in 1993. 1997 she was the winner of the coveted Gramophone award "Young Artist of the Year" for her debut recording with sonatas by Bela Bartók.
Isabelle Faust has performed with major orchestras such as the the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Royal Scottish Orchestra, the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, the Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Camerata Academica Salzburg, the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, the Radio Symphony Orchestras of Berlin, Munich, Stuttgart, Cologne, Leipzig and Hannover, the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and the Munich and Stuttgart Chamber Orchestras. She has worked with renowned conductors such as Sir Yehudi Menuhin, Michael Gielen, Ingo Metzmacher, Markus Stenz, Gary Bertini and Ivor Bolton.
Isabelle Faust does not play the classical repertoire exclusively, but also champions avantgarde repertoire like the Violin Concertos by Morton Feldman or György Ligeti. She has played first performances of Jörg Widmann´s "Insel der Sirenen" with the Munich Chamber Orchestra 1997, of his "Etude II" dedicated to her, of works by . Danish composer Lars Graugaard and of the Violin Concerto by Werner Egk with the Sinfonie Orchestra of the Bavarian Radio under Marek Janowski.
An avid chamber musician, Isabelle Faust is a regular participant at the festivals in Bad Kissingen, Heimbach, Lockenhaus, Delft, Lyon and Oxford. Her partners include Ewa Kupiec, Florent Boffard, Lars Vogt, Christian Tetzlaff, Joseph Silverstein, Bruno Giuranna, Thomas Riebl, Tabea Zimmermann, Boris Pergamenschikow, Alexander Melnikov or Clemens Hagen.
Her discography includes Bela Bartók´s complete works for violin and piano (Harmonia Mundi), the Sonatas for violin and piano by Robert Schumann (CPO), Haydn´s Violin Concertos (Pan Classics), Violin Concertos by J.S. Bach (Hänssler Edition) and the "Concerto funebre" by K.A. Hartmann (ECM), which received the “Cannes Classical Award”. Gabriel Faure´s complete works for violin and piano have appeared in April 2002 with Florent Boffard (Harmonia Mundi) and her CD on the same label with works by Szymanowksi, Janacek and Lutoslawski has been selected Best Classical CD of the Year 2003 by the New York Times.
Highlights of the 2003/2004 season include concerts with the London Sinfonietta on occasion of the 80th birthday of György Ligeti, the Gewandhaus Orchester Leipzig under Ingo Metzmacher (Janacek Violin concerto), the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra under Sakari Oramo (Jolivet Violin Concerto), the Radio Symphony Orchestra of Berlin (Beyer Violin Concerto) as well as recitals tours through Germany, Ireland, Italy, France, Holland and Japan.
Isabelle Faust plays the 1704 Stradivarius "Sleeping Beauty", a loan of the Landesbank Baden-Württemberg.
Promoters please note: if you wish to include this biography in a concert programme etc, please contact Hazard Chase to ensure that you receive the most up to date version. We kindly ask you to include the last sentence of the biography in your programmes.
Email: Sarah Trelawny
