Fauré: Berceuse, Op. 16 - CD

A violinist in a class of his own, Renaud Capuçon shows us here that the violin is king.

It's a forest of music, a bouquet of delights: concertos, chamber music, sonatas, duos, trios, piano quartets, quintets, etc. Brahms, Schumann, Debussy, Gluck, Schubert, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Fauré, Korngold. All Renaud's composers of choice are included – overwhelming, towering masterpieces for piano, cello, viola and orchestra. Collaborators whom he counts among his friends and who form part of what one might term the "Capuçon galaxy" are a virtually constant presence, for one of the distinctive things about Renaud Capuçon is that over the years, as his reputation and virtuosity have grown, as his mastery and maturity have increased, he has been able to build up a network of friendships, partnerships and common bonds which have come to joyous fruition every year at his Bel Air Festival. He is to undertake something similar with the new Aix-en-Provence Easter Festival which is entirely his initiative. From Vienna to Lugano, from France and Europe to Australia, Renaud Capucon has built his own world, developed his own tastes, his own affinity with other artists who love him and whom he loves in return - they are his family.

Along this walk we encounter the great Martha Argerich who undoubtedly served as a role model for the young Renaud when he first encountered the network of friendships surrounding the pianist and witnessed her fondness for bringing together the talents of unknown young musicians. His brother Gautier is there too, passionate and serious, as are the pianists with whom Renaud enjoys playing: Braley, Angelich, Ducros, Dalberto. Along the way we also meet Pahud on flute, Meyer on clarinet, Caussé on viola as well as several of the greats who bring their own direction, their own dialogue with this brilliant soloist: Nézet-Séguin, Langrée, Chung and, of course, his old friend, Daniel Harding.

It will be an indescribable pleasure to listen to this amazingly diverse display, to plunge into the wide-ranging worlds of a violinist whose choices highlight his eclecticism and passion, a violinist who long ago took technique to a new level of fluidity, into another dimension, and who happens to have the ability to blend major works in with a few lighter pieces.

Renaud Capuçon demonstrates to brilliant effect that "the violin is king". With this box set, he brings us a gift fit for a prince.

This set contains a selection of the recordings by the great French violinist focusing on his prowess as a chamber musician.

Ferras was born in 1933 of musical parentage – his father had been a violinist and a pupil of Marcel Chailley, a devotee and friend of Saint-Saëns. Though Christian’s talent was not in dispute, his father was extremely pushy and the undue pressure he exerted on his young son probably led to the mental instability that led to Ferras’s suicide in 1982. At the age of 8, Ferras enrolled at the Paris Conservatoire and in 1943 won first prize.

He recorded for the major record companies, and his colleague and friend, the violinist Zino Francescatti, commented that these recordings with Pierre Barbizet made in 1968 over five days were ‘musical perfection’. Ferras was ranked alongside Oistrakh, Stern, Menuhin and Francescatti in the top five violinists of his age, and it was Ferras whom Menuhin chose as ‘the ideal partner’ for the recording of the Bach Double Concerto for EMI in 1959.

Included are the three Brahms sonatas, the two by Schumann and those by Franck and the intriguing, short-lived Belgian Lekeu. Disc 4 contains encores that Ferras was especially fond of.

This set is a superb portrait of a great artist, who was gifted beyond anyone’s wildest dreams but lost the fight with his inner demons of depression and alcohol dependency. Essential listening for all lovers of the violin

‘Ferras is a player who habitually turns the simplest of melodic lines to poetical song … Lovers of the César Franck who happen not to know the Lekeu could well find a real extension of their pleasure in this very good record.’ Gramophone

‘Finely balanced yet ardent performance of the (Brahms) First Sonata.’ Gramophone

Extensive booklet tribute to and survey of Ferras’s life and career

Chamber works by Fauré, the influential composer who bridged the Romantic and Modern era in French music, are performed by a magnificent line-up of French and French-trained musicians.

Quintessentially Gallic in its amalgam of classical rigour, inventive harmonic language and subtle, but arresting sensuality, Fauré’s chamber music is here performed by nine leading French-born musicians – violinist Renaud Capuçon, violist Gérard Caussé, cellists Gautier Capuçon and Raphaël Merlin, pianist Michel D'Alberto, string quartet Quatuor Ebène – and an honorary Frenchman, US-born, Paris-trained pianist Nicholas Angelich. The four CDs comprise works for two, three, four and five instruments and span the composer’s career from early works, influenced by his teacher Saint-Saëns, to the more rarefied compositions of his later years.

The Capuçon brothers and Angelich – brought together by none other than Martha Argerich – are firmly established as a performing trio. Their recordings of Brahms chamber music for Virgin Classics prompted Gramophone to say that: “Nicholas Angelich and the two Capuçons play in a way that's sure to kindle anyone's enthusiasm for Brahms. Warm, beautifully balanced tone stresses the composer's romantic side, as does the expansive phrasing. There's a feeling of spontaneity, too, as though each player is discovering new aspects to the music while recording it ... the way they are able to strike a balance between Brahms's energetic flow of ideas, his strongly delineated structures and his lyric intensity is most satisfying," while International Record Review felt that “the performances here are both beautiful and individual, with passionate, rich-toned playing and infectious energy.” When they played Brahms’ C minor Piano Quartet with Gérard Caussé at Wigmore Hall in London, the Daily Telegraph (UK) admired the way “they beautifully conveyed the sense of some immense unspoken tragedy lurking behind the music,” adding “but it was the consoling beauty of the slow movement that really told.”

Fauré’s String Quartet, composed at the end of his life, featured on the Quatuor Ebène’s first Virgin Classics CD with works by Debussy and Ravel (who studied with Fauré). It became Gramophone’s 2009 Record of the Year, also winning Germany’s Echo Klassik Award 2009, Belgium’s Prix Caecilia 2009, and, in 2010, France’s Victoire de la Musique. Commenting on the Ebène’s performance of the Fauré, the Independent (UK) commented that “they brilliantly negotiate the contrast between the melancholy cast of the first two movements and the more contented, even animated tone of the final movement, by allowing the lingering impressions of the second movement's see-sawing undulations to haunt the rest of the piece,” while their approach to Debussy – who was born after Fauré, but predeceased him, and whose aesthetic is related to the older composer’s – was summed up thus by Die Presse in Austria: “The Quatuor Ebène ensures that scrupulously conceived musical structures are also sensuous in quality, and the musicians are sensitive to the play of tensions in directional chordal shadings – that beauty in dissonance, so to speak, which can so captivate the listener.”