Isabelle Faust, Violin
Kristian Bezuidenhout, Harpsichord

In the intimate spirit of the Performances Up Close series, this recital in which you sit onstage with the musicians pares the Baroque sonata down to its essentials. Fan favorite and Grammy Award–winning violinist Isabelle Faust—among the most probing interpreters of her generation—joins Kristian Bezuidenhout in his Princeton University Concerts debut. A Gramophone Award recipient known for reshaping expectations of historical keyboard performance, Bezuidenhout brings a sharply defined perspective to a program centered on Johann Sebastian Bach and the composers around him. At close range, the sonata becomes less a fixed form than a space of exchange. Faust’s unvarnished clarity and tensile sound chart the violin’s expanding expressive reach, while Bezuidenhout approaches the harpsichord not as accompaniment, but as an equal, thinking presence. The result is a program that reveals a repertoire still in the act of becoming.