Isabelle Faust, Ewa Kupiec, Florent Boffard - Bartók: Violin Sonatas (2010)

Isabelle Faust plays Bartok like a wonder-struck explorer confronting new terrains. She wrestles triumphantly with the First Violin Sonata's knotty solo writing, reduces her tone to a whisper for the more mysterious passages, employs a wide range of tonal colours and trans forms the finale's opening bars into a fearless war dance. This is cerebral music with a heart of fire and will brook no interpretative compromises: you either take it on its own terms, or opt for something milder. In this performance each phrase, each gesture combines executive finesse with the sort of inner vitality that one normally associates only with so-called 'golden age' instrumentalists. Faust has won international prizes and competitions; she has toured Europe, America, Japan and Israel; she has taken part in numerous music festivals and has partnered some of the world's finest string musicians in chamber music. Her collaborations have additionally included numerous concerts with Lord Menuhin and this CD also features a searching account of the unaccompanied Violin Sonata that Bartok wrote for Menuhin in 1944. Again, the performance is riveting and Faust harnesses her considerable virtuosity - not, I might add, to project a shining ego or an outsize personality, but to burn Bartok's inspired vision on to our musical consciousness.