Christian Ferras, Jean-Claude Ambrosini : “Romantic Violin” on Deutsche Grammophon “Special” / “Liebesfreud, Liebeleid – Romantische Geigenmelodien mit Chritian Ferras” on DG “Favorit” / “Mélodies romantiques pour violon avec Christian Ferras” on DG “Paraphe” 427 015-2 (1988) barcode 028942701526
Recorded 16-18 December 1968
Reissued “Romantic Violin” Belart 461 003-2 (1994) 028946100325:
Reissued (without Saint-Saëns and Stravinsky) in “Les Grands bis du violon” , DG 447 269-2 (1996) promo copy, non commercial:
Note: listed on some commercial websites under barcode 028944726923
Compiled in 4 CDs Brilliant Classics 93791 (2009) 842977037913:
Compiled in “L’Art de Christian Ferras” 10 DG 480 6655 (2012) 028948066551
Ferras The Poet
Originally posted on Amazon.com, 23 July 2011
This recital first came out, in the LP days, on DG 135133 “Rendez-vous musical avec Christian Ferras” (link will open new tab to listing on Discogs.com), except for The Swan of Saint-Saens and Stravinsky’s Chanson russe, which apparently were kept in DG’s vaults until this CD reissue. TT is now 58:24. For the complete track listing, see backover photos. I’ve documented here three editions, for the English market (DG’s collection “Special”, which is the one I have), Germany (“Favorit”) and French (“Paraphe”), but there were more: Discogs documents a Portuguese and a Taiwanese edition. On the “Special” edition (very very budget – no liner notes, just the track listing), DG copyrights this recording 1960 but this is false. Ferras began recording for DG in 1964. As indicated by the Christian Ferras Association and by the 2012 DG compilation “L’Art de Christian Ferras”, the collaboration between the fiddler and pianist Jean-Claude Ambrosini (one of the rare, if not only, infidelities to Ferras’ longtime partner and mentor Pierre Barbizet) was taped on 16-19 December 1968. I haven’t found online a backcover photo of the French edition, but the German edition is more accurate, giving a copyright of 1969 for the first 15 tracks, and 1988 for The Swan and Stravinsky’s Chanson russe. The promo copy issued by DG-France in 1996, “Les Grands bis du violon”, DG 447 269-2 (see header), reissues the contents of the original LP – without, then, the two complements.
Anyway, Ambrosini and that repertoire of encores were not Ferras’ typical fare. He might be somewhat forgotten today, but Ferras, a child prodigy and a pupil of Enescu, was one of the great stars of the violin scene in the late 1950s and 1960s in Europe, and reached his heydays when he was chosen by Karajan (whom he had first met in 1956) to be his soloist in a series of concerto recordings, which was planned to number 20. From 1964 to 1967 they completed Bach’s two, Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Sibelius (see my extensive Ferras CD discography for the reissues). But for all his public success, Ferras was plagued with severe depression and alcoholism, and his apex was also the beginning of a fast downfall. He more or less disappeared from the concert stage and recording studios in the 1970s (he did record Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas in 1977, which can be considered his Swan Song, despite remakes of the Beethoven and Brahms Concertos a year later with a lesser orchestra, lesser conductor and lesser label – Monte-Carlo, David Josefowitz and Guilde International du Disque if you really care to know; the Bach was reissued on CD in 2006 by the label Ages, 509 008-2 barcode 8032745090086, and already a rarity apparently). Despite an attempted comeback in the early 1980s, he committed suicide in September 1982.
Ferras was viewed by his admirers as the musician’s violinist, as opposed to the superficial and demonstrative showman. I saw once on the French TV the re-broadcasting of an interview of Ferras with the mondaine critic Bernard Gavoty, in which Gavoty tried to pressure Ferras into joining him into ridiculing the supposedly hollow virtuosity of Heifetz. You could sense Ferras’ embarrassment: he knew better than the stupid Gavoty that there was much more than that to Heifetz.
But in view of that picture, it is interesting to hear what Ferras does in the “superficial and demonstrative” repertoire of dazzling to charming to saccharine encores and other trifles. In fact – and maybe not by coincidence – he plays very few really virtuosic ones: Heifetz’ arrangement of Dinicu’s Hora Staccato, and Kreisler’s arrangement of Falla’s Spanish Dance, and that’s it. No Flight of the Bumblebee (but Rimsky’s Hindu Song from the opera Sadko – a sentimental bonbon – in Kreisler’s arrangement), no Kreisler Tambourin Chinois, no Bazzini Ronde des lutins, no Novacek Moto Perpetuo, no Paganini Caprice. In Dinicu, Ferras is clean, deliberate and civilized, nowhere near the over-the-top Gipsy swagger of young Isaac Stern in 1947 (in “Isaac Stern Presents Encores”, volume 31 of the great Isaac Stern A Life In Music series, Sony SMK 64 536, barcode 5099706453628 or 074646453629, see my review on Amazon.com pending repost here). But his Falla comes off with panache and more pungency than Itzhak Perlman is his long unissued debut recital from 1965, “Perlman Rediscovered”, RCA Red Seal 82876-62517-2 (2004) barcode 828766251722.
In the rest, Ferras plays with elegance and commendably keeps a measure of emotional restraint, Heifetz-like, thus avoiding the pitfall of the over-sentimental and saccharine. And God knows there is enough of that already in Schubert’s Ave Maria and Schumann’s Träumerei, that one doesn’t need to milk it. Only in Schumann’s Träumerei do I sense a certain squareness and lack of subtelty in his phrasings – but so many pianists have similarly failed in this piece. Ferras’ tone may not have the kind of sweetness, purity and unique, schmaltzy charm of Perlman – whose Kreisler compendium (“The Kreisler Album”, EMI 7243 5 62601 2 2, see my review on Amazon.com pending repost) shares three pieces with Ferras’ recital, Liebesleid, Caprice viennois and the arrangement of Chaminade’s Serenade espagnole – but then, Ferras tosses off the Chaminade/Kreisler’s with more swagger than Perlman, and with purer whistling harmonics. The young Menuhin in 1934 with Marcel Gazelle (in EMI Références’ sample of Menuhin’s recordings from the 1930s, 5 65963 2 barcode 724356596320, and my review on Amazon.com) sounds plodding in Sarasate’s Romanza andaluza (Spanish Dances op. 22/1) compared to Ferras (who practices various cuts); likewise, Ossy Renardy in 1938 with Walter Robert sounds placid and uninvolved (in Sony’s Masterworks Heritage series, “Michael Rabin: The Early Years”, MHK 60894 barcode 074646089422): here again, the swagger and passion are Ferras’, especially in the central section with double stops. Ambrosini’s piano is afforded a somewhat subservient position and smooth, non-percussive recording, which is detrimental only in Dinicu and the more boisterous moments of Kreisler. Ferras is miked from up-close, you can hear his breath intakes over headphones in some of the pieces.
So, this is for Ferras the poet more than Ferras the virtuoso.