Liza Ferschtman: Brahms, Suk

 The Strad Issue: April 2025

Description: Familiar and unfamiliar combine in powerfully emotional performances

Musicians: Liza Ferschtman (violin) Brussels Philharmonic Orchestra/Elias Grandy

Works: Brahms: Violin Concerto. Suk: Fantasy

Catalogue number: RUBICON RCD1120 

After the nicely moulded opening tutti of Brahms’s concerto, played with touches of rhythmic freedom, Liza Ferschtman launches into action with muscular bravura, before relaxing into the long flowing lines that follow. The second subject is elegant and she leads into the tutti with fiery energy. There is a constant ebb and flow of power and pliant lyricism, always with an underlying sense of direction and purpose.

Ferschtman gives a lyrical account of Kreisler’s cadenza (with a few tweaks along the way). It has a gentle, valedictory mood, which she carries on into the tranquillo melody that follows. She shows fervent sensitivity and emotional fluency in the second movement, imbuing its great melody with expressive tone and plasticity. The finale dances energetically, full of joie de vivre.

Josef Suk’s wonderful Fantasy for violin and orchestra is a work that should be heard much more often. After its opening Allegro impetuoso blast it proceeds on a sort of picaresque journey through one captivating episode after another, with Ferschtman relishing equally its lyrical and virtuosic open-heartedness and passages of Puckish high spirits (as does the Brussels Philharmonic under Elias Grandy). The recording is close, and catches the dynamism of the performance.

TIM HOMFRAY