Brahms: Violin Concerto, String Sextet No.2 - Isabelle Faust, Daniel Harding

Brahms: Violin Concerto Op.77

Isabelle Faust, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Daniel Harding

Brahms: String Sextet No.2 Op.36

Isabelle Faust, Julia-Maria Kretz (violins), Stefan Fehlandt, Pauline Sachse (violas), Christoph Richter & Xenia Jankovic (cellos)

From the first bars of the Violin Concerto, Isabelle Faust, conductor Daniel Harding, and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra locate and identify central themes and follow them like silken threads. The integration of Faust as a component of the orchestral fabric rejects the famous remark by Hans von Bulow about the Concerto for violin “against” orchestra. The playing of the orchestra is marvelous, and the solo oboe in the second movement excels as only German-style oboes can do, rich and luxuriant without losing the essential center of the instrument’s tone.

Things get weird and wonderful with the arrival of the rarely-heard first movement cadenza by Ferruccio Busoni, a courageous and welcome choice. It starts with a rumble of the timpani that punctuates the solo along martial lines that recall Beethoven’s cadenzas for his piano adaptation of the Violin Concerto. Eventually these are joined to total surprise by the strings.

The performance of the String Sextet, No. 2, Op. 36 (Faust and Julia Maria Kretz, vioins; Pauline Sachse and Stefan Fehlandt, violas; and Christoph Richter and Xenia Jankovic, cellos), directly linked to the love between Brahms and Agathe von Siebold, is similarly provocative. After a slightly wobbly opening few bars, the players adjust to the acoustical environment and give a serene performance in which restraint and startling clarity of line and texture reveal the music’s latent power.

Their solution to taking on the Sextet, by leaping ahead with scarcely a breath and an exhilarating tempo, is just one of several illuminating leaps of interpretive faith.

Laurence Vittes