The reissue boxes keep coming from Eloquence, and no serious collector could be happier. These days, Eloquence products are true collectors’ items, with excellent notes, reproductions of the original LP covers, and lots of newly rediscovered pieces dotted among those that are familiar. The collections are assembled and produced with great care and background knowledge, so bravo!

Here we have two important recording artists: one who enjoyed a long, distinguished career, and one who shone brightly but came to a sadly premature end. 

Ferras Reissue

The French violinist Christian Ferras came to prominence as a young artist in the 1950s and seemed to be everywhere in Europe during the ‘60s. His playing was polished, as he was trained in the Belgian school, but more passionate than his contemporary Arthur Grumiaux, and even more technically dazzling than the older Zino Francescatti.

Ferras recorded for Decca in the early ‘50s and recorded all the major concertos with Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic in the ‘60s: Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Sibelius, and even Bach. He also recorded a lot with EMI alongside such conductors as Kletzki, Sargent, and Silvestri,...