Berg: Violin Concerto, Beethoven: Violin Concerto, CD review An inspired coupling together with A-list casting make this disc a must. In a booklet note Isabelle Faust pays due homage to the artistry of Claudio Abbado, but it works both ways. These performances of two landmark violin concertos - the Beethoven from 1806 and the Alban Berg of 1935 - demonstrate a remarkable meeting of interpretative minds, a way of imagining and conveying the music that is absolutely hand in glove. Harmonia Mundi has already released valuable, revelatory Faust CDs, not least her Beethoven violin sonatas with Alexander Melnikov (HMC 902025.27) and the first volume of the Bach solo suites and partitas (HMC 902059), as well as repertoire by Brahms, Dvorˇák, Martinu˚ and Jolivet. All have had something interesting to say about the music, and the same is true of this pairing of Beethoven and Berg. Another crucial element is the quality of the Orchestra Mozart, one of Abbado's hand-picked ensembles that plays instinctively to his wise and expressive conducting and produces a sound that is thoroughly apt to the particular world of each piece. Berg's concerto, sparked by the death of his young friend Manon Gropius, is handled exquisitely. Abbado establishes an atmosphere that can embrace delicate wisps of texture, poetic reverie, heartfelt intensity and the anguish that builds to a climax in the second movement. Faust's timbre and spectrum of emotion are similarly judged and communicated with arresting maturity and sensibility. Likewise, she echoes the freshness and depth that Abbado stimulates in the orchestral playing of the Beethoven concerto, finding a mode of expression that is both lyrical and dynamic and contributing to a performance of real stature.