French Violinist Christian Ferras, 25, is a darkly handsome young man with a taste for driving sleek, low-slung cars around the Bardot-shaped coast of the French Riviera. He is also the most loudly acclaimed young violinist to emerge from France since the late Ginette Neveu, who died in a 1949 plane crash. Last week Violinist Ferras turned up in Manhattan's Carnegie Hall with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and from the moment he launched into Brahms's familiar D-Major Concerto, it was clear that he had a blazing, romantic vision and the controlled technique to carry it out.
Ferras' legato passages spun out in...