The prince is a princess. Every day, Isabelle Faust needs but the soft caress of her bow to awaken her “Sleeping Beauty”, a Stradivarius from 1704 that owes its nickname to the long spell during which it lay forgotten in an attic. Without doubt, the two were made for each other! Together, the beauty and her violin weave their magic in the virtuoso concertos as well as in chamber music, notably with pianist Alexander Melnikov, her musical partner and friend for more than a decade.

The concert programme offers three sonatas, or rather three whole worlds. All handled deftly by this duo, who make the leap from the luminous and almost insolent gaiety of Mozart’s Sonata K 306 to the lyrical tranquillity of the Brahms second, and ending with the oppressive anguish of Bartók’s first, a nightmare vision arising from the collapse of the Western World in the wake of the First World War.

With

Isabelle Faust violin
Alexander Melnikov piano

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Sonata in D major op. 1 n°6 KV 306

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Sonata in A major op. 100 n°2 "Thuner-Sonate"

Béla Bartók (1881-1945)
Sonata n°1