Isabelle Faust: Mozart

The Strad Issue: May 2026

Description: A glorious sonata series ends on a high

Musicians: Isabelle Faust (violin) Alexander Melnikov (fortepiano)

Works: Mozart: Sonatas for fortepiano and violin, vol.4: in C major K296, C major K303, E flat major K380, E flat major K481

Catalogue number: HARMONIA MUNDI HM 902617DI

Isabelle Faust and Alexander Melnikov’s fourth Mozart sonata album undoubtedly maintains the musical excellence of their earlier releases. Performing two works from Mozart’s Mannheim years and two from his Viennese maturity, they offer intelligent, spontaneous and perceptive period readings in a clear, detailed and perfectly balanced recording.

You can’t help but admire their close rapport, unanimity of timing, subtle and shapely phrasing, poise and the extraordinary variety of sonorities that they draw from their instruments – Faust’s 1704 Stradivari and Melnikov’s Kern-reproduction Anton Walther fortepiano. Their extensive dynamic range is admirably exemplified in K303’s Tempo di Menuetto, Melnikov’s feather-light cantabile contrasting strikingly with Faust’s forte outbursts, and vice versa.

They plumb the emotional depths of K380 and K481’s central movements, Faust especially lingering over the former’s yearning appoggiaturas, and the pair deftly capture the Jekyll and Hyde character of K380’s rondo finale.

Faust is sparing with vibrato, but both musicians decorate cadences and add imaginative ornamentation with almost tongue-in-cheek freedom, generally in repeated sections of movements and especially strikingly in the concluding variation movement of K481 and the repetitions of the rondo theme of K296’s finale. Melnikov’s spry, crisp passagework also scintillates, notably in the opening movements of K296 and K381 and the fifth variation of K481’s last movement.

ROBIN STOWELL