Isabelle Faust makes an intelligent, passionate debut as a major soloist in my book, here playing the Beethoven Concerto and the Kreutzer Sonata April-May 2006. Faust’s instrument deserves first mention, a lovely “Sleeping Beauty” Stradivarius from 1701, which can rasp or sing at Faust’s pyrotechnical discretion. I enjoyed the processional approach to the Concerto, mounted on a grand but not hyperbolic scale by her and conductor Jiri Belohlavek, noted for his tasteful, sonically luxuriant readings of Czech music for the Supraphon label. This is not to say that Belohlavek eschews the big sound in the Concerto, the rush of a tutti that occasionally knocks at Heaven’s gates. Both the Concerto and the Sonata receive that extra measure of propulsion from Faust’s whiplike, even witty tone; and her cadenzas–that of the composer in movement one utilizing a tympani obbligato and a brief, anticipatory flurry prior to the Rondo–are razor sharp and even a mite savage.
The chemistry between her and Melnikov in the Kreutzer Sonata proves electric as anything I can recall from the Milstein/Balsam collaborations. How often Faust employs the tip of the bow to create dynamic tension and hairpin acrobatics! Yet Faust’s intonation remains pearly clear, a model of cleanly articulated figures that reminds me of Christian Ferras in his heyday, and that is no mean comparison. The concertante nature of both realizations, the entirely happy meeting of musical minds in a synchronized style of performance, makes this a rich and decidedly refreshed look at two otherwise academic staples of the repertoire. While for the last few years I have yawned at the antics of the overly-hyped distaff pliers of the violin art, these Beethoven readings by Ms. Faust have waked me from my dogmatic slumbers. A sensational album, I dare say.
— Gary Lemco