How Jean-Marc Harari Found the Stereo Tape Containing All Three Legendary Performances

recounted in this video and then at the end you get to hear a bit of it

A highly prized and rare 1957 recording featuring violinist Michèle Auclair and pianist Jacqueline Robin-Bonneau performing Debussy and Ravel Sonatas for violin and piano released in mono only on a 10" disc is joined on this new The French Record Company release by a previously unreleased performance of a Roussel sonata for violin and orchestra recorded during the same 1957 recording session.

What's more, during his research for the release, the label's founder Jean-Marc Harari discovered a heretofore unknown stereo master tape containing all three performances! So for the first time ever, this long sought after Debussy/Ravel record gets a new 12" release featuring those performances and the previously unknown Roussel recording all presented for the first time in a gorgeous sounding stereo record cut all analog cut directly using the original master tapes.

In this video I describe the complete story of what led to this discovery, how the new record was produced and when I'm finished you'll get to hear a few minutes of it played back on the Wilson-Benesch Prime Meridian turntable.

For lovers of French impressionist classical music this discovery and release is a miraculous thing. The record's cost, €650 will limit who can afford to purchase it as will the minimalist production run of 150 copies worldwide but those who can afford it will be rewarded with a sublime listening experience for as many listens as he or she wishes to hear. Available in both 150g and 180g editions. (Mr. Harari asked me add, "Personally I don't prefer 150g to 180 g" ( as you said )...I just don't think 180 is better !)

Considering the cost of live performance concert ticket and that these two legendary performers are deceased, this record isn't really all that expensive (I hear you). This was Mr. Harrari's discovery and it's his label so he can charge as he wishes. Like our classical expert Mark Ward, we too are sorry that it's so expensive but that's what it is.

Mark Ward Comments

I have just finished listening to a file MF sent me of this stunning record, and he asked me to offer some thoughts.

The world of French classical music is, in many ways, a world unto itself. When I was studying and playing Baroque music as a student there came that moment when I had to venture from the well-trodden paths of the Italian, German and English schools (Vivaldi, Bach, Handel, Purcell) into the realm of French Baroque (Lully, Rameau and, especially for me as a viola da gamba player, Marin Marais). It’s a whole different way of thinking and playing, in which you basically have to unlearn everything about how you play - and especially ornament - the music and learn “the French manner”. This is not easy - and it was especially not easy back in the 1970s when French Baroque music was barely known. What a vast continent of incomparable riches awaited us all.

I remember one late evening at New College, Oxford, waiting for an admissions interview with the renowned Director of Music (and Choirmaster) with the most deliciously British name of Edward Higginbottom (I kid you not). I was seated in the Chapel while he finished practicing on the organ some French Baroque music. It was the musical equivalent of the skies opening. I felt like I had never really “heard” this music before, so revelatory was his way with it. The feel, the ornamentation: new musical vistas opened before me and from that moment onwards I felt I could “understand” French Baroque music in a way I never could before - given the right performers. (I never felt I gained that level of understanding in my own playing myself).

You may have a similar moment of revelation listening to this record, even though it is of French music from many, many decades later. (French music always seems to occupy its own aesthetic space, refreshingly apart). I certainly did. This is music I have known and loved for years (in the case of the Ravel and Debussy - the Roussel will be unfamiliar to most), and yet with this recording by two great artists who, again, were previously unknown to me, I was transported back in time to some magical realm where this music breathed as if heard for the first time.

It remains a fact that there is simply something special about hearing French artists perform French music, and that is even more the case here where we are hearing performers from a time before ubiquitous recordings and the "internationalization" of classical music ironed out the differences between national schools and performing traditions.

The playing here is effortlessly authoritative, with violinist Michèle Auclair surging, sighing and dancing her way in tandem with her equally brilliant recital partner, pianist Jacqueline Robin-Bonneau. They capture every fleeting nuance of this ravishing music in a manner which is indisputably “French” - don’t ask me what that is, I just know it when I hear it. It has that certain "je ne sais quoi" - if you will.

The recording itself is extraordinary in its fidelity and its evocation of another era of performance. It manages to be both unquestionably of its time (the late 1950s) in terms of the sonorities of the instruments and the “ambience” of the recording itself, and yet also utterly lacking in any qualities that might cause the listener to label it as “historic”. No sonic allowances need be made - this thing captures every dynamic shift, ebb and flow and tactile timbre of the performers’ playing and their instruments. (The piano sound is most distinctive: I’d love to know what make of instrument we are hearing - but my guess is a French Pleyel or Erard instrument, distinguished by a certain softness and roundness of tone).

For me one of the greatest joys of collecting classical records from the 1950s and 60s is that sense of opening a window onto a bygone age, when instruments and orchestras sounded very different from their homogenized selves today, when different performing traditions were still alive, all recorded with a veracity and sense of organic whole that our modern engineers are still trying to catch up with. The rediscovery of almost forgotten artists and recorded treasures is an integral part of collecting, and anyone who digs deep into their pockets to buy this record will be owning a treasure-trove indeed. (I think it’s worth every considerable penny if you can afford it, just like the Marcelle Meyer release before it, though I do wish the business model would allow more to enjoy these releases at a lower price). In the larger scheme of things we must all be grateful for a company like the French Record Company which is unearthing and promulgating these treasures for posterity.

Michael Johnson Comments

It’s perhaps fitting that I listen to this recording of two fantastic yet somewhat forgotten female virtuosos on International Women’s Day. Half the fun of this listening assignment was reading about the remarkable careers of these musicians. Perhaps we would have a much richer recorded legacy of Michèle Auclair if her performing career wasn’t cut short by a car accident in the 1960s. But despite her short footprint on recorded media, her legacy on the art form is substantial, as she had a prolific teaching career in both Paris as well as at the New England Conservatory in Boston teaching many of the brightest young violinists of the current generation, including Stefan Jackiw who I’ve had the pleasure of hearing in concert a few times now.

This vintage 1957 recording contains some of the richest violin sound I’ve heard from the so-called “golden age” of stereo. Auclair’s sweet tone and lyricism, mixed with her surprising power and dynamism (Auclair studied in both the French and Russian violin schools) comes through marvelously. The Ravel and Debussy are standard works of the repertoire, but in many ways hearing Auclair and and Robin tear through the Ravel with energy and assurance reinvigorated the piece. The two musicians work together with keen ensemble and musicianship.

The real treat though is the piece missing from previous mono releases of this session, the Roussel second Violin Sonata (1924) which is recorded and performed far less than the other two works. Albert Roussel was a composer heavily influenced by Debussy, Ravel, and of course his teacher Vincent d’Indy, but by his late career he had matured into a unique voice in the French musical landscape. His music was contrapuntal, even neoclassical in some elements, which maintaining the unique tonal exploration of his impressionist predecessors. Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu sought out Roussel specifically as a teacher for his unique and personal style when he arrived in Paris, and there are definitely elements of Martinu’s neoclassicism that I hear in the work of Roussel.

Cynics will perhaps hear Roussel’s Sonata as less graceful or melodic than the other works here, but there is a refreshing directness to this music, and Auclair’s delivery will leave you with no doubt in your mind of the work’s genius. She fully commits to the melodic structure of the piece, and is aided twofold by Jacqueline Robin-Bonneau who’s tight rhythmic underpinning is crucial to this work coming across effectively.

I will leave our illustrious editor to comment most effectively on the sound quality, but I was quite impressed with the vinyl rip he sent me. The rich imaging provided by this stereo recording is a great window into what could have been with this ill-fated French label. The violin sound has this effortless and extended high end that walks the perfect line between smooth and cutting. The piano is perhaps not as sharply defined, but still possesses a large sound with weight and scale. I wish everyone with a modest budget could hear this brilliant performance brought to life on this LP, but in the end I’m happy even a few will get to experience it. If anything, this recording leaves me wanting for a more comprehensive rediscovery and reissue program of Michèle Auclair’s all too short discography.