Recording of the Week, Isabelle Faust - Solo

A new recording from the German violinist Isabelle Faust is always a highlight of the autumn calendar, and this year she’s delivered a glorious double-whammy: six weeks on from her dizzying accounts of concertos by the ‘virtuoso and poet’ Locatelli with Giovanni Antonini and Il Giardino Armonico, she’s back today with an illuminating programme of unaccompanied works by Matteis père et fils, Pisendel, Guillemain, Vilsmayr and Biber which offer some fascinating insights as to how composers across Europe explored and expanded the capabilities of the instrument in the late Baroque period.

Faust isn’t the first violinist to delve into the rich tradition which arguably reached its zenith in JS Bach’s set of six sonatas and partitas for solo violin in 1720: Rachel Podger’s Guardian Angel and Tutta Sola both ploughed a similar furrow, and Bojan Čičić offered up a complete set of Johann Jakob Walther’s Scherzi da Violino (1676) as a compelling prequel to his own recording of the Bach earlier this year. But those who already know and love those Podger albums will find plenty of new delights on offer here: there’s relatively little direct duplication of repertoire, and Faust’s supremely intelligent, expressive playing throughout is as unmissable as ever.

Matteis the Younger’s undated Fantasia in A minor makes for an arresting opener, and sets the tone for the programme as a whole: like the Vilsmayr sonata which crops up later on, it stirs into life with an ethereal arpeggio figure centring on the open strings, almost as if the composer is sounding out the instrument’s raw material before deciding on how to explore its potential. There’s something truly spellbinding about the way the tonal palette gradually widens as the music unfolds in often unexpected harmonic directions: in lesser hands, the piece could perhaps sound like a study in string-crossing and tricky left-hand stretches, but Faust’s combination of absolute technical security and improvisatory freedom transform it into something infinitely rich and strange.

That lovely sense of flexibility is carried over into the three excerpts from Matteis the Elder’s Ayres for the Violin (published in the same year as the Walther Scherzi), and indeed throughout the entire programme: the album is largely a vibrato-free zone, with colour and expressiveness coming instead from Faust’s beautifully-judged rubato and the occasional pungent dash of portamento (check out the cheeky slides between notes in the ‘Passaggio rotto’ and the way she lingers teasingly on the final resolution to the octave in the Fantasia which closes this set).

The Pisendel sonata which follows is roughly contemporaneous with Bach’s magnum opus, and the Prelude and Giga in particular sound for all the world like they could belong to one of his Partitas; Faust brings bags of rhythmic vitality to the Scotch-snap figures dotted throughout the music, though elegance is ever her watchword. I could imagine others leaning more heavily into the rumbustious quality of some of this music, especially as the open strings ring and the multi-stopping intensifies, but Faust’s restraint brings its own rewards - not least the clarity with which she articulates the dialogues between the instrument’s upper and lower registers in the closing Variations, and the way she gently points up the various harmonic surprises which Pisendel springs upon us.

The excerpts from the Amusement pour violin seul by Louis-Gabriel Guillemain (a pupil of pioneering composer-violinist Jean-Marie Leclair) are beautifully done - especially the plaintive little B minor aria where Faust’s sweet but slightly astringent tone really comes into its own, and the ebullient Allegro Majestoso and bourrée in which she injects a welcome dose of dash and swagger.

Vilsmayr’s Partita No. 5 from 1715 (with the E-string tuned down a tone to deliciously unsettling effect) catches the ear with its fleet, graceful Gavotte and Sarabande and an earthy Ritirada replete with double-stops and pizzicati, but it’s the haunting ‘Guardian Angel’ passacaglia from Biber’s Rosary Sonatas which has the last word. This is by far the most virtuosic music on the album, but the sense of stillness at the centre never wavers and Faust creates some magical effects through variation of bow-speed on long notes which I’ve never encountered on rival recordings. Fingers crossed that she tackles the entire set in the fullness of time…