Search - Beethoven :: Beethoven: Violin Sonatas; Cello Sonatas

Brilliant Budget Beethoven

Michael B. Richman | Portland, Maine USA | 06/01/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I stumbled upon this 5 CD set of Beethoven Violin and Cello Sonatas on Amazon a couple of months ago, and for the price simply could not pass it up. While it is not uncommon for me to own a dozen or more recordings of my favorite symphonies, I generally steer clear of multiple copies of chamber performances -- even us serious collectors have to draw a line in the sand somewhere! But it is easy to make an exception with Beethoven, and for the Cello Sonatas I own the Ma/Ax (Beethoven: Complete Sonatas for Piano & Cello) and DuPre/Barenboim (Beethoven: Piano Trios; Violin & Cello Sonatas), and the Oistrakh/Oborin (Sonatas for Violin and Piano), Zukerman/Barenboim (again Beethoven: Piano Trios; Violin & Cello Sonatas), and both Schneiderhans -- Ludwig van Beethoven: The Sonatas for Piano and Violin - Wilhelm Kempff / Wolfgang Schneiderhan and Beethoven: Complete Violin Sonatas -- in the Violin Sonatas, in addition to some scattered individual selections by others. So what attracted me to get even more accounts were two of the performers featured here -- Christian Ferras and Paul Tortelier. After discovering Ferras a few years back via his famous recording of the Bach Concerto for 2 Violins with Menuhin (Best of the Great Composers 6: Bach (Concerto for Two Violins, Orchestral Suite No. 3, Magnificat)), I quickly snapped up what I could of his Concerto recordings, most significantly Les Introuvables de Christian Ferras (see my review). That set also featured a couple of discs of Ferras performing Sonatas with pianist Pierre Barbizet, so I knew their special bond would be renewed here. Since hearing his first reading of the Bach Cello Suites, Tortelier has also been a personal favorite. The only uncertainty for me was pianist Eric Heidsieck, but after purchasing his delightful title in the "Les Rarissimes" series, I knew a partnership with Tortelier would be stellar. In all, this is a terrific set of Beethoven Cello and Violin Sonatas, performed magically and priced right."

...but be warned: Ferras-Barbizet 1958 mono, Tortelier-Heids

Discophage | France | 08/17/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This 5 CD-set conveniently collates the recordings of the Violin and Piano Sonatas made in November 1958 by Christian Ferras and Pierre Barbizet, and of the Cello and Piano Sonatas (plus 3 sets of variations) by Paul Tortelier and Eric Heidsieck in 1971 & 1972.



It's amazing to think that in 1958 Ferras was only 25 years-old. The great French violinist had the career of a shooting star, making his first recording at 14 (see my review of Rodrigo: Concierto de estio; Semenoff; Double Concerto; Elizalde; Violin Concerto) , proceeding with a superb series of LPs, first for Telefunken and Decca than EMI (between 1957 and 1964, documented mainly on Les Introuvables de Christian Ferras; see my review for more info on the discography of Ferras) until he was picked up by DG and Karajan. He is probably best remembered by the general classical-music public from the concerto recordings he made with the Maestro between 1964 and 1967(now gathered on The Great Violin Concertos). And then it all practically stopped: Ferras was plagued with severe crises of depression and alcoholism. Despite an attempted and apparently rather successful come back in 1982, he committed suicide that same year. He wasn't yet 50.



Ferras' partnership with Pierre Barbizet (1922-1990) was also famous. They met in 1948 or 9, either - the reminiscences of Ferras and Barbizet differed slightly here - at the Scheveningen competition in Den Haag, the Netherlands (chaired by Menuhin, who like Ferras was an Enescu pupil), in which Ferras shared 1st prize for violin with Michel Schwalbé (who was to become Karajan's concertmaster at the Berlin PO) while Barbizet took 1st prize in piano, or at the Marguerite Long in Paris (Barbizet got the 5th prize in piano - Aldo Ciccolini and Ventsislav Yankoff shared 1st - and Ferras the 2nd Prize in violin with no first Prize awarded in that category). Though Barbizet was Ferras' elder by 11 years, they struck at once an artistic kinship and personal friendship, Barbizet acting as a second father to the young fiddler and introducer to literature and arts. Said Ferras: "I discovered not an accompanist but a companion. We understood each other without having to explain anything", echoed by Barbizet: "he felt me, he felt what I was going to do... Luck is when you find someone who is your complement, two identities that add up to do the one and same thing". And Karajan said the same: "his genius is the prescience of how his partner will play".



I haven't done detailed comparative listening on the Violin and Piano Sonatas, but at that level of excellence the notion of "the best" is meaningless anyway. The readings of Ferras and Barbizet seemed to me as good as any I have heard. But beware: while stereo already existed in 1958 and many labels already recorded with the new technology, these are mono recordings and, as good as they are, that's how they sound, with a certain lack of spatial bloom and a slightly recessed piano. So this set is more for the Ferras-Barbizet admirer than for those just seeking a budget or mid-price issue of the compositions. The latter are advised to go to Perlman and Ashkenazy (Beethoven: The Violin Sonatas [BOX SET] [ORIGINAL RECORDING REISSUED]) for instance and, for the cello sonatas, to Rostropovich and Richter (Beethoven: Complete Music for Cello & Piano) - but the Tortelier-Heidsieck recording, which doesn't suffer the same sonic limitations, is also available alone in a 2-CD set (Beethoven: Cello Sonatas [ORIGINAL RECORDING REISSUED]). I'm not sure how many times Tortelier recorded Beethoven's Cello Sonatas. The EMI Collection "Les Introuvables de Paul Tortelier" has an incomplete set (the 5th Sonata is missing) done with Karl Engel in 1951-3 (Introuvables - don't let yourself be fooled by the cover image, it is faulty).



Oh, and if you buy the present set, be warned. I almost returned it, believing it was incomplete: there were only CD 1, 3 and 4. The strange thing was that the multi-CD jewel case's media trays could apparently contain only 4 discs. So I thought there might have been a second case that had been omitted in the shipment. But no, the indication on the case ends was indeed 5 CDs. Well, it turned out that the two outer media trays are actually hinged trays with the two remaining discs hidden under, so the jewel case could actually contain as much as 6 discs.



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