Isabelle Faust

When Isabelle Faust began to build her international career in the late 1990s, it was immediately clear that someone very fresh and individual had arrived on the scene. Born in Esslingen, Germany, in 1972, Faust began to learn the violin at five when her father took her along to his own violin lessons and quickly realized that his daughter had a very special talent. Playing in a family string quartet was also a formative experience: Intimate chamber music has been as important in Faust’s mature career as virtuosic solo work. Where some young solo violinists cultivate beauty of tone above all else, for Faust it is always the intellectual and emotional content of the music that comes first, as is clear in her much-praised performances of Bach’s solo violin works. Her tone is full of variety, from nervous fragility to incisive strength. Several critics noted early on that Faust has the ability to find new interpretative angles even in such well-ridden warhorses as the Beethoven and Brahms concertos. She has also been much praised for her performances and recordings of the concertos by Schumann, Dvořák, Bartók, and Berg, along with the violin sonatas of Beethoven and Schumann. Contemporary music also forms a substantial part of her repertoire, and she has given world premieres of works by Messiaen, Eötvös, and Widman.