MARCH 6, 2026
Isabelle Faust & Alexander Melnikov | Mozart: Sonatas for fortepiano & violin, Vol. 4
Isabelle Faust, violin · Alexander Melnikov, fortepiano
Release day: February 2026With this fourth volume in their Mozart sonata cycle, Isabelle Faust and Alexander Melnikov continue a project that explores the composer’s works for violin and keyboard on historical instruments. The programme brings together four sonatas written between 1778 and 1785 — K.296, K.303, K.380 and K.481 — tracing Mozart’s gradual transformation of the genre from keyboard-centred pieces into fully balanced chamber dialogues between the two instruments.The works span crucial moments in Mozart’s career, from the Mannheim period to his early years as an independent composer in Vienna. In the earlier sonatas, the violin begins to move beyond its traditional accompanying role, while the later works reveal a more mature partnership between the instruments. By the time of K.481, completed in 1785, violin and keyboard share thematic responsibility in music of striking expressive depth, culminating in a set of variations that closes the sonata.
Faust performs on her 1704 Stradivarius “Sleeping Beauty”, while Melnikov plays a fortepiano after Anton Walter, whose lighter sonority highlights the conversational character of Mozart’s writing.
Listen here.
MARCH 3, 2026
Unsuk Chin | Gougalōn, Double Concerto & Graffiti
Ensemble intercontemporain, Pierre Bleuse
Release day: February 2026
Few contemporary composers have shaped the orchestral imagination of the past decades as decisively as Unsuk Chin, and few ensembles have been as closely associated with the performance of new music as Ensemble intercontemporain. This release brings them together in three substantial works — Gougalōn (2009/11), the Double Concerto for piano, percussion and ensemble (2002), and Graffiti (2012) — forming a compact but revealing portrait of Chin’s writing for large instrumental forces. Under Pierre Bleuse, the ensemble approaches this repertoire with the precision and structural clarity it demands.
Each work explores a different facet of Chin’s sound world. Gougalōn, inspired by childhood memories of Korean street theatre, unfolds in six sharply contrasted episodes whose surface vitality conceals intricate construction. The Double Concerto dissolves the traditional opposition between soloists and ensemble: the piano — prepared with small metal elements that subtly alter its colour — and percussion interact with the surrounding musicians in tightly interwoven processes of rhythmic and textural transformation. In Graffiti, Chin draws on a broad instrumental palette, moving between density and transparency across its three movements. Together, these performances highlight a composer for whom complexity is never ornamental but structural — and whose music continues to occupy a central place in the contemporary repertoire.
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