Arkes-Records.com

Portrait of Suzanne Ramon, by Alain Duault :

Here is a new prodigy : Suzanne Ramon.

Born in Budapest, at the age of eight she joined the Ferenc Liszt Academy having gained special permission to start there at so early an age, and at 10 years old won the Bela Bartok prize. But at 10, in 1956, upheaval and terror - and exile - struck. Her family emigrated to Israel and young Shoshana, as she was then known, continued to devote all her passion to her cello. At the age of 13 she performed in public, making her concert hall debut in Tel-Aviv, playing no less a piece than Schumann's Cello Concerto.
In 1962 she was awarded a scholarship to study at the Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique in Paris with the great André Navarra. It was an experience which was to prove a turning point in her career.

On her arrival in the French capital, the Hungarian pianist George Cziffra, impressed by the young Suzanne's extraordinary talents, took her in, providing her with accommodation and treating her like his own daughter.

In 1964, Suzanne Ramon was unanimously voted the winner of the First Prize for cello at the Paris Conservatoire and was one of the laureate of Geneva's International Cello Competition. She was also awarded the Oreste Ferrari prize in Italy, and won a special prize at the Chigiana Academy in Sienna. The following year, to crown all these achievements, she won the First Prize for chamber music at the Paris Conservatoire, with Catherine Collard at the piano.

At the end of her training, there were three main influences on Suzanne Ramon: those of the musical, stringed instrument and cultural traditions of Austro-Hungary, Israel and France.

She then embarked on her international career, meeting several artists who were to have a major influence on her: Pablo Casals, Isaac Stern, Menuhin, to name but a few, and in particular Mstislav Rostropovitch. She went on quietly, considering each stage appearance very carefully, to deepen and intensify her passionate relationship with music - a relationship which is not only physical but also spiritual.

Suzanne Ramon was soon playing to great acclaim in Great Britain, the USA, Canada, France, Italy, Hungary, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, and Belgium.

Not only must you hear Suzanne Ramon play but you must also see her wrap her arms around her instrument, a superb 1690 Guarnerius with its amber and spice tones and golden cognac colour: its voice under the bow can declaim or sing, roar or weep - a human voice produced from the depths and from the memories.

You have to hear these attacks which plunge breathtakingly right to the heart of sound, to see her imperious gestures, which seem to split the listening universe, separating the world of silence from that of this deep melody.

And the breadth of her phrasing, these vast waves of ample phrases, this total surrender of the body to the sound, this sense of dramatic timing, and above all this immense, swirling inspiration, borne by an emotional charge which can both amaze and move: Suzanne Ramon has a stunning power which she uses to carve out the music unlike any other cellist, seizing it and somehow making an offering of it, combining a mystical fervour with a physical fervour - which, quite simply, resembles love.