A new issue of Jolivet's Violin Concerto (1972), the 12th and last of his concertante works and held by some to be his musical testament, is long overdue so this splendid account from Isabelle Faust is cause for real celebration.
The Concerto is not immediately easy listening, being a tough late example of Jolivet's primitivist idiom. While outwardly conforming to conventional classical design, internally each movement is a freewheeling, evolving structure.
The opening Appassionato retains a few traces of sonata form and is volatile and lyrical by turns.
Its ethereal coda is a fine example of the acuity of Jolivet's inner ear as well as Faust's feather-light touch, much in evidence throughout the complex, central Largo. Here the steel in Faust's playing is much in evidence in its faster, eruptive episodes. The finale is the most straightforward in manner, centred on the virtuoso cadenza.
It is fascinating to return to Chausson's intensely romantic Poème (1894) – with which the disc starts – after Jolivet's richly coloured, piled-up textures. Although stylistically worlds apart, both works share a heady, exotic expression.
Faust is equally convincing in both, ably supported by the Deutsches Symphony Orchestra conducted by Marko Letonja and bright, close sound. The playing-time is not generous but the pairing is very effective as it stands and in performances like these self-recommending.

Faust plays [the Jolivet] with a mixture of authoritative power, weighty dignity and hypnotic grace, while conductor Marko Letonja coaxes frenziedly glutinous sounds from the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester...coupled with a performance of Chausson's Poème, which has rarely been bettered in its ecstatic sweep.

Faust makes another exciting foray into the 20th-century repertory...Her sound has passion, grit and electricity but also a disarming warmth and sweetness that can unveil the music's hidden strains of lyricism.