Violin Sonatas / Romance op.28 / etc

"Violinist Isabelle Faust turns in stunning performances that are meticulously detailed yet full of headlong passion, soaring long lines, and bigness of conception. Faust, moreover, is clearly inspired by pianist Florent Boffard's affirmative, uplifting support, especially in his rock-solid, shapely bass lines and the opulent, organ-like, utterly unbanging tone he evokes from the concert grand... it's hard not to get swept away by Faust and Boffard's large-scaled, generous artistry, bathed in ample but not overly resonant sonics. A very special release, not to be missed."
ClassicsToday.com

"Faust and Boffard bring to mind other celebrated masters of Faure's music - such as Domus - in their beauty of tone, in the richness and depth of their instrumental technique and their sheer sensuality of sound. Harmonia mundi's engineers have created a close, warm and reverberant recording that is a pleasure to listen to. This is an exemplary CD that fans of Faure will greatly enjoy. Strongly recommended."
(AudAud.com)

"(This) receives from Faust and Boffard an exemplary flowing performance. Altogether an impressive disc."
***** Five Stars BBC Music Magazine (Aug 2002)

More than forty years elapsed between the composition of Gabriel Fauré's first Violin Sonata and that of the Second. 'Over all of this hovers a charm that bathes the whole work, and makes the mass of ordinary listeners accept the most extreme strokes of daring as if they were perfectly natural.' (Camille Saint-Saëns)

Isabelle Faust studied the violin with Christoph Poppen and Dènes Zsigmondy. In 1987 she won First Prize in the International Leopold Mozart Competition, and in 1993 the Premio Paganini in Genoa. The renowned magazine Gramophone gave her its Young Artist of the Year Award for her first recording of sonatas by Béla Bartók, in 1997.
Isabelle Faust appears with numerous orchestras, including the Hamburger Philharmoniker, the Radio Symphony Orchestras of Stuttgart, Munich, Cologne and Leipzig, the Münchner Philharmoniker, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonia Prague, the AVRO Radio Orchestra Hilversum, Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, the Münchner Kammerorchester and Camerata Salzburg. Her tours have taken her to many European countries, as well as Israel and Japan. She is regularly invited to perform with such conductors as Paavo Berglund, Marek Janowski, Sakari Oramo and Jiří Bělohlávek. She made her debut in the USA in 1995, playing Paganini's Concerto no.1 with the Utah Symphony Orchestra under Joseph Silverstein.
Whilst not neglecting the classical and Romantic repertoire, Isabelle Faust is a noted interpreter of the great twentieth-century works of Bartók, Berg, Ligeti, Lutosławski and Takemitsu. She gave the first performances of Insel der Sirenen for violin and orchestra and Etude II for solo violin by Jörg Widmann, and of the Werner Egk's Violin Concerto, and commissions new works from young composers.
Isabelle Faust is an enthusiastic chamber musician, and regularly takes part in chamber music festivals at Bad Kissingen, Berlin, Heimbach, Lockenhaus, Oxford, Delft and Lyons. Amongst her partners are Ewa Kupiec, Florent Boffard, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Roger Muraro, Lars Vogt, Christian Tetzlaff, Joseph Silverstein, Tabea Zimmermann, Thomas Riebl, Bruno Giuranna, Boris Pergamenschikov, and Veronika and Clemens Hagen.