I’ve been working on a discography of some collections of historical reissues from EMI France, “Les Introuvables”, “Les Rarissimes” and “Pianistes français”. I thought it would be a quick job, but – as I should have expected – it turned out to be quite a journey, because, for publication, with typical and self-destructing fastidousness, I decided to look at previous releases of the material contained in those sets, as well as subsequent reissues. Hope to finish before the end of the “stay-at-home” orders… but these are nearing!
Anyway, I took the opportunity to repost here my old review of “Les Introuvables de Christian Ferras“, a fine set from 2002, although a somewhat frustrating one, not for what it included but for what it omitted (like Berg’s Chamber Concerto and Chausson’s Concert for Violin, Piano and String Quartet), and now superseded by more complete reissues, namely EMI-become-Warner Icon “Christian Ferras The Complete HMV & Telefunken recordings”, barcode 190295763084.
And a post-script from May 26: all this led me to abandon for a couple of weeks my work on the label discography, and compile a huge Christian Ferras chronological CD-discography. How did I put it hereabove? “I thought it would be a quick job, but – as I should have expected – it turned out to be quite a journey”. But I’ve reached destination. Now I need to get back to “Introuvables”-“Rarissimes”-“Pianistes français”!