Taste is a complicated matter, as are opinions. I spend a lot of time denouncing "beautiful" violin sound. Then I listen to Christian Ferras playing Guillaume Lekeu's truly wonderful sonata for violin and piano ... and I wallow in Ferras's beautiful (and musical) playing. Next thing I know I'll be praising the music of Karl-Heinz Stockhausen. I must embark on a re-listening of Ferras, a violinist who has faded from popular view (except in France) but a violinist who, until he went downhill, could be numbered amongst the most significant and most enjoyable of the last century. Difficult to think of a bad Ferras recording (though I seem to remember not liking his recording of Chausson's Poème, a work in which I would have expected him to excel, but I think he only recorded it just once, in 1953, early in his career, and with a Belgian orchestra).