Carving out a musical identity is harder than it used to be, violinist Isabelle Faust tells Arminta Wallace
How do you know whether an up-and-coming new kid on the classical block is any good? Take a peek at their record label, for a start. Anyone who records for Harmonia Mundi is . . . well, let's just say it's the musical equivalent of playing footie for, say, Deportivo La Coruña. Then you might check the CV. Any awards at all? If you see three - the Leopold Mozart competition, the Premio Paganini and Gramophone magazine's Young Artist of the Year - you know you're on the right track.
Above all, though, you have to listen. And you don't get far into Isabelle Faust's recording of violin and piano music by Janácek, Lutoslawski and Szymanowski before you realise that - to put it in footie terms again - the girl's a bit special. The New York Times thought so too, choosing hers as one of the CDs of the year for 2003.
But Isabelle Faust, fresh as a daisy although she has just flown from Florida into an unusually hostile Irish April, laughs and shakes her head. Carving out a musical identity nowadays, she says, is horribly difficult. For a start, there are lots and lots of good musicians out there, all highly educated, all technically adept. Then there are the rules.
"We have so many more manuscript editions now which did not exist before; information about period instruments, baroque style and so on," she says. "Previous generations had more freedom to express themselves, to do it their own way - players such as Yehudi Menuhin, for example. If you listen on the radio to the big violinists of Menuhin's generation, you know immediately exactly who is playing. Today it's a little bit more difficult. We can't play with that sort of freedom any more - if we did, somebody would be sure to say: 'Oh, haven't you studied your music history?' And so we have, in general, very good musicians. But outstanding musical personalities? Maybe not."
Listen to some more of that CD and you'll be tempted to disagree. Better still, catch Faust live before her current tour of Ireland finishes next week. The programme reflects her own musical inclinations.
"Bach is, of course, for me, always number one," she says. "And then Beethoven."
She has never before played Bach sonatas with modern piano.
"Normally the pianist is really afraid of doing that," she says - but her accompanist on this occasion, French pianist Florent Boffard, is afraid of nothing. "He's a fantastic pianist. He has been for 11 years in the Ensemble InterContemporain with Pierre Boulez in Paris, so he knows everything about contemporary music - and also about other music, of course. We've been playing together for many years and we are very close friends."
Bach's Sonata in C minor, BWV 1017, will be followed by Beethoven's sonata No 10, Opus 96, in G.
"This is the most mysterious Beethoven sonata, and my favourite one," Faust says. "There are so many different things in it that you sometimes don't know which atmosphere to decide on."
Over the eight nights of the tour, she adds, their interpretation will almost certainly change and develop. "This is one sonata where you probably will never find out the way to do it - you will always have lots of question marks."
No such question marks hang over the piece by Irish composer Elaine Agnew - well, maybe just one.
"It's a very short piece, seven minutes, and it has a very clear structure," Faust says. "But it is called Statues. It had another name before, and the composer changed it. I don't know why. She will be present at some of the concerts, so I hope she will make some comments to us about it - and maybe some explanation for the change of title, because I don't see it as a fixed piece. I think it's a moving piece."
Moving statues, maybe? Moving quickly on, the evening finishes with a luxuriant chunk of Strauss; the sonata in E flat, Opus 18.
"It's wonderful," says Faust. "It always takes people away in passion and virtuosity."
A major part of any violinist's personal "sound" has to do with the particular - often priceless - instrument they play. Faust plays a 1704 Stradivarius known, in violin circles, as "The Sleeping Beauty". Some explanations, please? Faust laughs again.
"Because it was 150 years lying in a cellar somewhere," she says. Seriously? "Yes, but the atmospheric conditions must have been OK because it is in perfect condition - and beautiful to look at. I actually found this violin at a dealer's nine years ago. Some of the notes were absolutely gorgeous. Not the whole violin, just notes here and there - all over the place. But still it touched me so deeply that I said: 'OK, I have to have this.' Of course, it was too expensive for me to buy it myself, so I looked for someone, and eventually found a bank, who bought it for their foundation."
Take a bow, Landesbank Baden-Württemberg. Faust has been playing the violin for just eight years and it is now, she says, approaching its peak.
"Before me, I think there was somebody playing it for five years - but, of course, compared to the other Strads around, that's nothing. It really took years of playing to open it up and make it vibrant again. In Florida this week I played with an old friend who had not heard the violin since three years ago - and he was quite astonished by how much it had changed."
What people actually hear, however, is itself an astonishingly fluid business. A critic hears one concert, performers hear another one. And the audience? Faust chuckles.
"What very often happens when I play with piano is that people come up after the concert and say: 'Oh, the piano was much too loud.' That's a very, very common reaction," she says. "But I think people very often have the idea that these are actually violin recitals and that the piano is there because the violin cannot play alone - that the violin should always take priority. Which is completely stupid with the kind of programmes I play. I mean, a Beethoven sonata is a sonata for piano and violin, and not the other way round. If people programme virtuoso violin pieces, then it's a different story - but I don't normally do that."
So what does she say to these put-downers of the piano? She shrugs again and pulls an impish face.
"Well . . . it depends on which mood you are in," she says. "And on which way it has been said, of course. I had a little concert in Paris recently. I was standing in the street afterwards, because I was waiting for somebody to drive by and pick me up. And I had five people passing by who came out of the concert. And as they passed, each one said something different about the balance between violin and piano. It was very funny. And it kind of put it into perspective."
• Isabelle Faust and Florent Boffard play at Island Arts Centre, Lisburn, tonight, at Mullingar Arts Centre tomorrow, at Linenhall Arts Centre, Castlebar, on Monday, at the Bank of Ireland Arts Centre, Dublin, on Tuesday, and at Riverbank Arts Centre, Newbridge, on Wednesday. The tour is organised by Music Network with assistance from the Goethe Institute