The lightning life of Ginette Neveu, a French genius of the violin

Stéphane Bern 3:56 p.m., December 30, 2021

"If one day life snatches you away from me ..." The man to whom Edith Piaf addresses in her 

, to her lover, Marcel Cerdan, whom she met in a Parisian cabaret.

When she sings for the first time, in September 1949, which will be one of her greatest successes, she does not know that life will tear her great love from her very prematurely ... barely six weeks later.

On October 28, the 33-year-old boxer was killed in a plane crash on his way to the United States to find his soul mate. 

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His disappearance made the headlines in the press and left France in shock.

Edith Piaf would have been to the end of the world for him.

His grief is immense.

In reality, it's almost a double mourning for the Kid.

Because in Air France flight 009, aboard the Constellation, was also, in the middle of the 36 other passengers, Ginette Neveu.

A virtuoso born in music

"I would have traveled thousands of kilometers to listen to it," she wrote in her autobiography.

Eclipsed by the "Moroccan bomber", "the man with the hands of clay", Marcel Cerdan, Ginette Neveu, the greatest violinist of the century, left for her great American tour.

Unfortunately, the trajectory of this music legend was shattered in mid-flight. 

But let's go back.

At the age of 5 and a half, Ginette Neveu gave her first public recital.

The child prodigy, born in Paris in August 1919, bathes in music from the cradle.

She is the great-niece of organist and composer Charles-Marie Widor.

His mother, Marie-Jeanne, violin teacher, taught him very early to master the archer and tame the strings.

She then sends him to improve with the famous Line Talluel.

Ginette was not yet 8 years old when she performed the Premier Concerto, in G minor, by Max Bruch, Salle Gaveau, in Paris.

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At that age, are we not afraid of anything? In fact, it is. Little Ginette is really nervous. To overcome her apprehension, she finds an amazing technique: she works standing on a table. If she is able to conquer vertigo, then she can face that of being in front of an audience. And it works. The precocious virtuoso takes all the rewards. In 1928, she obtained the first prize from the École supérieure de musique de Paris as well as the city's honorary prize.

Two years later, she was only 11 years old, and entered the Paris Conservatory.

It only takes her eight months to win the first violin prize.

An unrivaled speed record.

At the same time, she studied composition with Nadia Boulanger, one of the most renowned music masters.

At 14, she composed a caprice, three sonatas for violin and began writing a concerto.

The little one is certainly talented, but she works tirelessly.

A perfectionist, she sometimes only stops playing with a bloody neck.

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In the 1930s, Ginette Neveu won prestigious competitions. In particular, she won first prize at the Henryk-Wieniawski International Competition in Warsaw, in which she was able to participate thanks to the financial assistance of her teacher. In her white poplin dress, she looks like a model little girl. However, it has neither the character nor the features. In reality, she is rather casual in nature. On vacation, Ginette plays table tennis and pétanque.

Later, her comrades nicknamed her "the gladiator" for her short hair, her Roman vestal dresses and her broad shoulders.

His androgynous appearance fuels rumors of homosexuality.

Ah, as soon as we do not fit in the mold, it gets people talking.

A woman must be a woman.

They say she plays like a man.

His sound power was such that the press of the time qualified his playing as "manly".

The post-war success

But the brilliant international career which offered itself to Ginette Neveu was interrupted by a man's affair: war. She refuses commitments in Germany and prefers to play with her brother Jean, who becomes her official partner. It was with him that she recorded Debussy's Sonata for violin and piano, as well as a version of Ravel's Tzigane. In 1943, in Bordeaux, the composer Francis Poulenc created for her a moving work: a Sonata which pays homage to Federico Garcia Lorca, the homosexual Spanish poet shot by the Francoists.

When peace returned, the most prestigious chefs (Walter Susskind, Hans Rosbaud, or even Charles Munch and Sir John Barbirolli) called on her.

As a soloist, Ginette Neveu sublimates the greatest pages of the classical repertoire: Beethoven, Brahms, Sibelius… 

Chausson's

is one of her battle horses.

In the only filmed archive we have left of her, we can watch her perform in all her glory.

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And then there is this year 1949. A year which promises to be exceptional. In her diary, Ginette Neveu confides: "I feel that something is happening to me, an evolution in me, or in my art rather". She is at the height of her career. On August 11, she turns 30 before getting ready for her big American tour at the end of October. She works 5 hours a day on her two violins, her Stradivarius and her Guadagnini.

On October 20, in Paris, she gave her last recital, Salle Pleyel. The title is ominous: "Farewell concert". Goodbye, because she says goodbye to the Parisian public, which she is temporarily leaving for long tours abroad. Seven days later, on the Tarmac at Orly airport, with her brother Jean, Ginette Neveu meets Marcel Cerdan. She shows him her stradivarius. The boxer is impressed by the instrument, which he takes in his big hands.

Cerdan sets off to face The Raging Bull and find Edith Piaf.

Ginette and Jean are going on a huge tour.

But life decides otherwise.

The weather is appalling.

The flight plan is modified.

The landing planned in the Azores around 2 a.m. did not go as planned.

The plane in which they were seated crashes into the mountain.

Marcel Cerdan and Ginette Neveu perish in the crash.

The death of the first eclipsed that of the second.

But they survive in our memories.