We have thousands of human-written stories, discussions, interviews and reviews from today through the past 20+ years. Find them here:

Search the site Search

The Week in Reviews, Op. 541: Isabelle Faust, Daniel Hope, Anne Akiko Meyers, JACK Quartet

March 18, 2026, 6:53 PM · In an effort to promote the coverage of live violin performance, Violinist.com each week presents links to reviews of notable concerts and recitals around the world. Click on the highlighted links to read the entire reviews.

Isabelle Faust performed Robert Schumann's Violin Concerto with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and Dinis Sousa.

• Violinist.com: "Here is a violinist with a beautiful sense of phrasing and expression, backed up with a reliable technique seemingly capable of delivering just about anything the moment requires: a gorgeous melody, a blistering fast passage, double-stop trills, perfect-pitch octaves - even a vulnerable little spiral of a chord at the end of her solo encore."
• Seen and Heard International: "Relentlessly difficult and borderline harrowing, (the Schumann Violin Concerto) is miraculous in its best moments – which, in Faust’s hands, were many. From the first note, she dug in with fierce conviction and tenacity and the orchestra rose with her."
• San Francisco Classical Voice: "Isabelle Faust, one of just a few violinists who play the work these days, has an attractively dark, mellow timbre....the hall could not disguise, nor even partly relieve, the relentless fatigue that this score produces."

Daniel Hope directed and performed Joseph Bologne's Violin Concerto in A major with the New Century Chamber Orchestra.

• San Francisco Classical Voice: "Hope’s performance of this concerto — one of twelve the composer wrote for violin — is an obvious argument for Bologne’s rising profile these days. Hope, as soloist, captured the characteristic charm of this music. His cadenza in the finale, including the cellist in a move that appeared to surprise the ensemble as well, was practically its own thrilling movement."

Anne Akiko Meyers performed the Barber Violin Concerto with Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano and Emmanuel Tjeknavorian.

• Opera Click: "From her extraordinary Guarneri del Gesù violin, she draws a golden sound of total solidity, a bow stroke of incredible uniformity, perfectly sculpted phrases—no showmanship, only the substance of spirit placed entirely at the service of the music...The brilliant final movement of the concerto, a moto perpetuo, revealed Meyers’s rock-solid technique...."

JACK Quartet performed Wolfgang Rihm and other works in a recital at Hertz Hall at the University of California, Berkeley.

• San Francisco Classical Voice: "...the JACK Quartet rose to the task brilliantly. The dense polyphony that characterizes the piece was rendered strikingly transparent in this performance. Emerging from this chaos are bursts of gasping and sighing in rhythmic unison between the players. The musicians gave great care to these moments, fluently switching on a dime from soloistic virtuosity to palpable cooperation."

Joshua Bell directed and performed music of Saint-Saëns, Schumann and Ives with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields.

• South Florida Classical Review: "Bell stepped out as soloist for Camille Saint-Saëns’ Violin Concerto No. 3....Bell displayed a startling command of the instrument through the work’s technical minefields. What was more impressive, however, was the musical maturity he showed. His liquid bel canto rolled through the first movement, and the whistle-register high notes in the finale came out with laser-like clarity. "

Siwoo Kim performed the Sibelius Violin Concerto with the South Florida Symphony Orchestra and Sebrina Maria Alfonso.

• Palm Beach Arts Paper: "30-year-old soloist Siwoo Kim tossed it off with deceptive ease and a sense of fun. It was a spectacular rendition, in which the performer visibly reveled in the work’s manifold complexities."

The Ehnes Quartet performed in concert with pianist Orion Weiss and the McDuffie Young Artists at Spivey Hall in Morrow, Georgia.

• EarRelevant: "The Ehnes Quartet performed with immaculate precision while maintaining the lyrical warmth the music requires, particularly in the second movement (of Beethoven’s String Quartet in G major, Op. 18 No. 2.)"

Violist Tabea Zimmermann performed with pianist Javier Perianes at the Library of Congress.

• Washington Classical Review: "In this program of repertoire from the 19th and 20th centuries, Zimmermann drew forth an exceptionally robust tone from her custom-made instrument by Patrick Robin, often preferring an almost vibrato-free sound that seared with its near-perfect intonation."

NSO associate concertmaster Ying Fu and assistant principal cellist Raymond Tsai performed the world premiere Carlos Simon's Double Concerto Suite with the National Symphony Orchestra.

• Washington Classical Review: "Although the orchestra and soloist played with admirable virtuosity otherwise, this new suite seemed to collapse a bit under its own weight as the melodic ideas ran thin."

Violist Sào Soulez Larivière performed Bartók’s Concerto for Viola and Orchestra with the Prague Philharmonia and Emmanuel Villaume.

• Bach Track: "The winner of the 2023 Prague Spring International Competition, Larivière plays with an unusual intensity for someone so young, adding emphasis with plenty of body language. He showed impressive technical command of a complex piece, and if his reading seemed bloodless at times, it was in keeping with the overall dark tone of the music."

Please support live music in your community by attending a concert or recital whenever you can!

You might also like:

• The Week in Reviews, Op. 540: Takács Quartet, Chad Hoopes & Jan Vogler, David Coucheron
• The Week in Reviews, Op. 539: Tracy Silverman, Augustin Hadelich, Veronika Eberle
• The Week in Reviews, Op. 538: Anne-Sophie Mutter, Christian Tetzlaff, Leonidas Kavakos

* * *

Enjoying Violinist.com? Click here to sign up for our free, bi-weekly email newsletter. And if you've already signed up, please invite your friends! Thank you.

Replies