Most violinists would approach Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas as works to be approached as part of a mixed programme. Not Isabelle Faust. This season she performs all six unaccompanied works in a single evening – a marathon that will be one of the highlights of her time as our Artist in Residence.
‘Personally I prefer to play all six in one evening,’ she reflects. ‘I find myself so totally immersed in Bach’s unique polyphonic violin universe that it feels very rewarding to remain there for the whole journey, to forget about time.’ It is a demanding ask of everyone in the room – ‘the listener needs to be able to concentrate almost as much as the player’ – yet she cannot remember a concert where the audience was unwilling to come with her. ‘Programming all six in one evening naturally chooses listeners who know what they are up to. It is always a very special evening.’
Across the season she sets Bach alongside Brahms, Schumann, Berg and the Australian composer Brett Dean, journeying from the baroque to newly written music. The residency also takes in Berg’s Violin Concerto with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and a new concerto by Dean with the London Symphony Orchestra. ‘With Bach, Brahms, Schumann, Berg and Dean I think I will be able to show a glimpse of the vast beauty and diversity of the violin repertoire,’ she says. ‘I am always astonished how rich the violin repertoire is, and how far one can still go to search for jewels.’
At the heart of the residency is her reunion with pianist Alexander Melnikov, for sonatas by Schumann and Brahms. Their partnership is now two decades old, and the pair set out to build something closer to a string quartet than a pick-up duo – a shared language that could ‘take up the conversation where it left it’. ‘An enormous number of questions can be dealt with even without discussing,’ she says, ‘which leaves space for new questions to be asked.’ Her admiration is unguarded: Melnikov is ‘an intelligent, humble, searching musician… I hope to be able to work with him until the end of my violin days.’
For Faust, the invitation is both an honour and an opportunity. ‘It’s simply wonderful to be able to present a diversified repertoire in a relatively short period of time,’ she says, ‘hopefully enabling a curious and loyal audience to experience my views on different composers, different epochs, different formations.’ Best of all, it is a chance to bring some of her favourite musician friends to the Barbican – ‘to enjoy sharing our music together with the wonderful Barbican public’.
A little window, she calls it, onto the generous palette of the violin. On this evidence, it is one well worth stepping through.
