Christian Ferras

Along with his friend Caruso, Fritz Kreisler (1875–1962) was one of the superstars of the early gramophone era. He was “the master musician among the violinists of the day” (New York Times); he died 50 years ago (29 January 1962). As a composer, he is famous for his Viennese-style melodies, such as Liebesfreud and Liebesleid, for his notorious pieces “in the style of” various 18th-century masters (which he passed off as their original works, claiming to have rediscovered them in old manuscripts), and for his arrangements of well-known works by other composers.

We remember one of the world’s greatest violinists with an enticing 2CD set that includes a first time release on CD of a tribute LP from 1961, original Kreisler recordings, and an array of great modern violinists playing his works.

Christian Ferras (1933-1982) was, alongside Jacques Thibaud, Zino Francescatti and Ginette Neveu, one of the great violinists who had a determining influence on the Franco-Belgian violin school: an art of playing the violin which is often associated with sensuality, elegance and a refined sound quality. Following his début in Paris in 1946 with the “Symphonie espagnole” by Édouard Lalo and Beethoven’s violin concerto, Ferras launched an international career.

Together with the pianist Pierre Barbizet he formed a congenial duo which lasted for three decades. His cooperation with Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic during the 1960s marked the pinnacle of his career. Ferras had made his début with the Berlin Philharmonic as early as 1951. Under the baton of Karl Böhm, he performed the Beethoven violin concerto at the Titania Palast. On this occasion a studio recording was made at the Jesus-Christus-Kirche in Berlin which is presented here. It is fascinating to experience the beauty and confident serenity of Ferras’ interpretation of the solo part when he was only eighteen years old.

A live recording from 1964 with the Radio Symphony Orchestra Berlin under the baton of the Italian-American conductor Massimo Freccia is an impressive document of Ferras’ reading of the Alban Berg violin concerto: he saw it as a primarily romantic work which he performed with great expressiveness to striking effect. Ferras’ career took a tragic turn when, towards the end of the 1960s, he began battling with depression and alcoholism which resulted in a gradual withdrawal from concert life. In 1975, he accepted a professorship at the Paris Conservatoire and in the following years he no longer performed publicly. Ferras returned to the concert platform once more in March 1982; however, only three weeks after his final concert on 25 August 1982, at the age of 49, he took his own life.

Recorded 17th August 1960.

“Conducting is only a means to an end, never an end in itself. Making music is everything – and the less conducting draws attention to itself, the more beautiful the music will be and truly stir our hearts”.

Joseph Keilberth joined the Karlsruhe Staatstheater at the age of seventeen as a répétiteur. Ten years later he became general music director, the youngest at the time in Germany. On Furtwängler’s recommendation he was appointed chief conductor of the German Philharmonic Orchestra of Prague for the war years, moving to the Dresden State Opera (then in the Russian zone) in 1945. He remained in that position until 1950, by which time he had achieved a bizarre reunion with his Prague orchestra, now renamed the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra and newly resident in that town in western Germany.

Keilberth was a great Wagnerian conductor and recorded the first-ever stereo Ring – now available as a celebrated Testament release in a 14-CD set – SBT141412.

If both the Bruckner and the Schubert overture which opened this 1960 concert were Keilberth regulars, the Berg Violin Concerto was a newcomer to his repertoire that became a personal favourite; it was also his first-ever Berg score. He prepared it for the first time in December 1955 for a Hamburg State Opera concert with André Gertler. “It’s really coming together now”, he noted, “but much still sounds as if it’s wrong”. A little later he wrote to his son Thomas: “I’m pleased that the Berg Concerto now means more to you. For me, it’s the only 12-tone work that I like”. Then, by the 1965/66 season, Keilberth was replying to a questionnaire about his “Ten 20thcentury Masterworks of Music”. The Berg Concerto had become his No.2 choice, just ahead of Stravinsky’s Dumbarton Oaks but losing out to Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler Symphony.

Among the conductors who returned repeatedly to Salzburg from 1957 was Joseph Keilberth, and if he did not appear even more frequently at the Festival, this was no doubt due first and foremost to his workload, which included not only Salzburg but also the Bayreuth and the Munich Opera Festivals. But whenever he had a gap in his schedule, Salzburg, too, could look forward to an undoubted high point in its calendar, as was the case in 1960, when Keilberth appeared with the Berlin Philharmonic for a musically varied programme made up entirely of works by Austrian composers.

The concert’s fleet-footed opening took the form of Schubert’s so-called 'Rosamunde' Overture (actually the overture to the opera 'Die Zauberharfe' D 644), which was followed by Berg’s Violin Concerto ('In Memory of an Angel'), not a work that one typically associates with Keilberth, but his reading of the piece with the young soloist Christian Ferras makes it clear that he found Berg’s music eminently accessible, making it all the more regrettable that at the time of his premature death in 1968 he was still hesitating to take Wozzeck into his repertory. He was on more familiar ground with Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony, which brought his 1960 Salzburg Festival concert to an end in a particularly festive and musically distinguished way.

The legendary Columbia Records recordings taken from 1957-58