Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto & Symphony No. 5

Listen on Presto Music. Free thirty day trial. Find out more.

Faust is the Wise Child of the violin world, combining the innocent exuberance of a prodigy with a commanding intellectual depth that carries all before it…If the Reformation is harder to love... — BBC Music Magazine, November 2017, 4 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 25th Aug 2017
Catalogue No: HMM902325
Label: Harmonia Mundi
Length: 61 minutes

Presto Recording of the Week

18th August 2017
Presto Recordings of the Year

Finalist 2017

In stock

Usually despatched within 1 working day

Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64

Work length25:07

$3.60

$4.50

$5.25

Isabelle Faust
Freiburger Barockorchester
Pablo Heras-Casado

I. Allegro molto appassionnato

Track length11:21

$1.40

$1.75

$2.05

II. Andante - Allegretto non troppo

Track length8:09

$1.20

$1.50

$1.75

III. Allegro molto vivace

Track length5:37

$1.00

$1.25

$1.45

Mendelssohn: Hebrides Overture, Op. 26

Work length9:48

$1.20

$1.50

$1.75

Freiburger Barockorchester
Pablo Heras-Casado

Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 5 in D major, Op. 107 'Reformation'

Work length26:40

$4.60

$5.75

$6.70

Freiburger Barockorchester
Pablo Heras-Casado

I. Andante. Allegro con fuoco

Track length10:32

$1.40

$1.75

$2.05

II. Allegro vivace

Track length4:53

$1.00

$1.25

$1.45

III. Andante

Track length3:24

$1.00

$1.25

$1.45

IV. Choral. "Ein fest Burg" - Andante con moto - Allegro vivace - Allegro maestoso

Track length7:51

$1.20

$1.50

$1.75

About
Reviews
Videos
Explore

About

Recording of the Week, Isabelle Faust plays Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto

18th August 2017

Isabelle Faust shows a wholly new side to one of the most well-known and widely-performed concertos in the violin repertoire.

After the mystical 'Hebrides' Overture and the masterly ‘Reformation’ Symphony, Mendelssohn embarked on his second violin concerto. After a long gestation in which he polished the orchestration and meticulously revised the solo part, the work was finally premiered in Leipzig in 1845. From David to Joachim, virtuosos honed the violin part with the composer over successive revivals, leaving to posterity traces of their playing style: fingering, bowing and score markings. This precious heritage has been scrutinised by Isabelle, as she did for her Brahms Violin Concerto recording, as a previously unexploited expressive resource. Isabelle Faust, accompanied by the Freiburger Barockorchester, in top form, under the direction of Pablo Heras-Casado, offers us a miracle of purity and lyricism in a freshly-minted interpretation that fulfils Mendelssohn’s promise of ‘a concerto to make the angels rejoice in heaven’!

Reviews

November 2017

Faust is the Wise Child of the violin world, combining the innocent exuberance of a prodigy with a commanding intellectual depth that carries all before it…If the Reformation is harder to love than its predecessors, Heras-Casado strips off its Sunday best: all is fiery warmth and immediacy, with brindled horns and bristling articulate strings.

8th September 2017

The Symphony No 5, the “Reformation”, labours over its Lutheran connections, but a performance as ardent as this one by the Freiburger Barockorchester under Pablo Heras-Casado has something of an evangelist’s fiery rhetoric. Period instruments also score in the Violin Concerto. Isabelle Faust is a soloist of elfin quickness of spirit and there is tremendous drive overall

Awards Issue 2017

[Faust’s] playing throughout is remarkable not only for the expected attributes of fidelity and accuracy but for the tough, wild and impassioned qualities she restores to a piece which easily falls prone to white-dress, sugar-and-spice performances…The disc will rightly attract attention for Faust; but anyone collecting Heras-Casado’s cycle of Mendelssohn will snap this up and wait eagerly for the final instalment.

18th August 2017

Faust’s research infuses the sound-world of the piece from the very first phrase...Her treatment of the plaintive E minor melody at the opening showcases two of the main stylistic innovations which result from her mining of the archives: very little vibrato, with the sound warmed instead by liberal but judiciously-applied portamento...There’s always the sense that the music’s being well-served rather than short-changed by these choices.

21st September 2017

It’s rare to hear such a hoary old work sound so fresh. Her playing and that of the orchestra is long of line but short on vibrato, and the pursuit of an authentic Mendelssohnian style leads Faust to some choices that will have modern listeners doing an aural double take...And yet the whole thing hangs together – it’s raw-edged, urgent and not always beautiful, but always compelling.

18th August 2017

[Faust] takes the radical decision to perform the work as scholars now think mid-19th-century violinists would have done: with minimal vibrato, but lots of slides between the notes and very different bowings, making the piece sound far spikier and febrile than the suavely efficient readings one usually hears today. Some may think her tone is too parched; I loved it.

Classical Ear 30th October 2017

Caracteristically lithe and muscular readings of the Hebrides Overture and Fifth Symphony, the latter especially invigorating in its bracing bite, poise and interpretative chutzpah…Certainly, it's all bracingly – not to say startlingly – different from what we are used to hearing, and the disc as a whole pleasingly challenges and confounds in equal measure.

Videos

An error occurred.

Try watching this video on www.youtube.com, or enable JavaScript if it is disabled in your browser.

An error occurred.

Try watching this video on www.youtube.com, or enable JavaScript if it is disabled in your browser.

Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto & Symphony No. 5

CD

Downloads

Contents

Recording of the Week, Isabelle Faust plays Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto

Download queue