Iván Fischer conducts the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in a varied classical programme with Haydn’s Symphony No. 102 and two lively overtures by Rossini in the exceptional acoustics of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. Introducing each of the two parts of the concert, the overtures to L’Italiana in Algeri and La gazza ladra set the tone with elegance and lightness. “With Iván Fischer, Haydn and Rossini allow the leading orchestra of the Netherlands to show off its finest skills” praises ResMusica. The heart of the first part is devoted to Mozart’s masterful Sinfonia concertante for violin and viola, played by two world-class artists: Isabelle Faust, one of the most outstanding violinists of our time, and Tabea Zimmermann, artist in residence this season with the Concertgebouw orchestra, offer a majestic duo.
Mozartwoche 2001
Mozart, Violin Concerto No.3 in G major, K.216 (Mozartwoche 2001)
Isabelle Faust began taking music lessons at the age of five. The recipient of many international awards, she is today a sought-after guest as soloist and chamber musician in all of Europe, the U.S., Israel and Japan. She plays a “Sleeping Beauty” Stradivarius of 1704. This recording from the Salzburg Mozartwoche documents her debut there. The Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg has been the orchestra of the city and Land of Salzburg since 1958 and regularly concertizes at the Salzburg Festival and the Mozartwoche. The principal conductor is the Dutch-born Hubert Soudant, who led the Nouvel Orchestre Philharmonique de France in Paris from 1981 to 1983 and the Utrecht Symphony Orchestra from 1983 to 1986. In addition to his activities in Salzburg, Soudant is also the principal conductor of the Orchestra and Opéra des Pays de Loire in Nantes and Angers, France. Mozart, who was also an accomplished violinist, wrote all of his five violin concertos in Salzburg in 1775, apparently for his own personal use. Their style can best be described as cosmopolitan and reflects the many musical currents he had been exposed to while on his travels in Italy and elsewhere. Aristocratic, suave, witty, wonderfully melodious, they are dazzling gems that conceal an inner core of challenging material that can be truly mastered only by the very best violinists.
Salzburg Festival 2025: L’Histoire du Soldat
“A stroke of genius” (FAZ): The Salzburg Festival has pulled off a sensational coup with The Soldier’s Tale at the Salzburg Marionette Theatre, founded in 1913 and a World Heritage Site. World-renowned painter and sculptor Georg Baselitz designed the puppets for Stravinsky’s fairy tale about a poor soldier who makes a pact with the devil. Dominique Horwitz as narrator, the magnificent chamber ensemble led by violin luminary Isabelle Faust, and the expressiveness of the marionettes make this a “musical and theatrical masterpiece” (Süddeutsche Zeitung).
Blomstedt conducts Beethoven
More than 200 years after its premiere at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, the famous trio Isabelle Faust, Jean-Guihen Queyras and Martin Helmchen have congenially mastered the artistic challenge of Beethoven’s gemstone. Under Herbert Blomstedt’s sensitive direction, the soloists unite chamber music intimacy together with virtuoso sophistication – and prove once again that the Triple Concerto is an unduly underestimated, much too rarely programmed masterpiece. The composer’s fifth symphony – indeed, the hit of classical music – is better known. In Leipzig, however, Blomstedt succeeds in achieving an entirely new perspective of this work. In the culmination of his three-year, intensive reenactment of Beethoven’s cosmos, the impressive sound that characterizes the Swedish grand seigneur’s conducting is heralded by transparency rather than showmanship, relevance instead of pathos, and tenderness in place of sentimentality.
Pure Schumann! Robert Schumann – The Solo Concertos
Who would have thought to hear the Freiburger Barockorchester playing Schumann? At the end of a long journey from Baroque to Romanticism the FBO and Pablo Heras Casado perform the three great solo concertos by Robert Schumann and his rarely heared “Ouvertüre, Scherzo und Finale” op. 52. Isabelle Faust, Jean-Guihen Queyras and Alexander Melnikov. More than being exceptional soloists, Isabelle Faust, Alexander Melnikov and Jean-Guihen Queyras all three are members of the same trio and this experience will not fail to give their interpretation homogeneity and absolutely unprecedented scale. A unique concert recording from Berlin Philharmonic Hall: Pure Schumann! Length: 99’ (17’ / 28’ / 26’ / 28’ ).
Memorial Concert for Claudio Abbado
Claudio Abbado, who passed away on 20 January 2014 in Bologna, gave Lucerne Festival innumerable outstanding musical experiences. The Lucerne Festival Orchestra honors him with a special memorial concert at the Easter Festival. Opening the program is the first movement from SCHUBERT’s Unfinished Symphony, which Claudio Abbado conducted during his last performance in Lucerne in August 2013 — the final concert of his career. The program continues with Alban BERG’s Violin Concerto, which is dedicated “to the memory of an angel.” The soloist is Isabelle Faust, who recorded this very work with Claudio Abbado in 2011. To conclude the concert, the LFO performs the finale from Gustav MAHLER’s Third Symphony, which the composer originally planned to title “What love tells me.” Conductor is Andris Nelsons. (Cat. No. UNITEL: A955500020000)
Quatuor pour la fin du temps
With Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Isabelle Faust, Jean-Guihen Queyras and Jörg Widmann, four outstanding soloists dedicated themselves to Olivier Messiaen’s “Quatuor pour la fin du temps”, a unique work of music history, and performed it together at the “Meetingpoint Music Messiaen” that was built on the site of the former prisoner of war camp just outside of German-Polish town Görlitz/Zgorzelec, exactly where the camp’s so-called “theater barrack” once stood. It was there that Messiaen composed the quartet and on January 15, 1941 performed it for the first time in front of fellow prisoners.
LSO: Rattle conducts Brahms and Shostakovich
It begins with the engines of industry: mechanical marches, pounding brass. An uneasy second movement, and then a nightmarish vision of life in Stalin’s Russia explodes in a frenzied succession of dance themes. Shostakovich withdrew his Fourth Symphony before its first performance, after hints that he was treading a fine line with the Soviet authorities. It shines on as an extraordinary vision of thwarted humanity. Brahms wrote his Violin Concerto with, and for, his friend, the virtuosic Hungarian musician Joseph Joachim, and its foot-stomping finale honours Joachim’s heritage. PROGRAM Brahms: Violin Concerto; Shostakovich: Symphony No. 4
LSO: Gardiner conducts Schumann & Mendelssohn
Sir John Eliot Gardiner leads a journey through the Romanticism of Weber, Mendelssohn and Schumann. The Overture to Weber’s grand opera Euryanthe, which has taken on a life of its own in the concert hall, is a window onto some of the most exciting moments of the whole work. Isabelle Faust and Kristian Bezuidenhout then present Mendelssohn’s Concerto for Violin and Piano, which elegantly balances a measure of Classical restraint against rich and Romantic displays of feeling. We close with Schumann’s Third Symphony. One of the composer’s most impressive, it paints a euphoric picture of the German Rhineland in broad Beethovenian style, closing with an exhilarating finale. PROGRAM Weber: Euryanthe Overture; Mendelssohn: Concerto for violin and piano; Schumann: Symphony No 3