Even more Raff on its way from Sterling

[Mark Thomas]

Even as it is releasing its latest recording of choral music by Raff, Sterling is putting the finishing touches to another major release, once again employing Henrik Schaefer and the Gothenburg Opera Orchestra:

This will be a double CD with 95 minutes of music, spanning Raff's career. The nine orchestral intermezzi from his Oratorio Welt-Ende (on the subject of the biblical apocalypse) form an extended sequence lasting 40 minutes. There are surprises in store for anyone who still thinks Raff no more than a Mendelssohn epigone: the writing here is really advanced for 1881 with some very lean textures in intermezzi like "Famine" and "The Last Signs", contrasting wonderfully with more typical Raff creations like the bombast-puncturing "War", the exciting "Death and Hell" and the noble and peaceful "Judgement" and "New World" intermezzi. It would be wonderful to have a modern recording of the whole work, but these purely orchestral pieces still represent a third of it. The Welt-Ende intermezzi, together with the Four Shakespeare Preludes just issued by Chandos, give tantalising glimpses of how Raff's orchestral music might have developed had he lived longer.

The other CD in the album has two very early works. It's fascinating to hear what Raff made in 1850 of Liszt's fragmentary and disjointed outline sketches for his Prometheus Unbound Overture, and to compare the result with Liszt's reworking of the material a few years later into his familiar symphonic poem. This was no mere orchestration job; Raff's is essentially his imagining of Liszt's intentions, much as Anthony Payne did with Elgar's Third Symphony, and it's at once familiar and disconcertingly different. There's as much Raff in its 18 minutes as there is Liszt.

The final work is billed as the Incidental Music to Bernhard von Weimar and dates from 1854. I write "is billed as" because this is as close a reconstruction as can now be made of the music. The major piece is the Overture, but that no longer exists in its original form and so what has been recorded is the work in its more familiar guise: the Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott Overture, published over a decade later. This powerfully effective piece is no longer available on CD (although the Marco Polo recording can still be downloaded) and it's good to have it back. The only differences from the original overture are that Raff transposed it from C major to D major and revised the piece's ending. The other two works are what promise to be a pair of fine and (at over 8 minutes apiece) quite substantial marches, one upbeat and the other more sombre, material from one of which will be already familiar to anyone who knows their Raff! Unfortunately, missing from the Incidental Music are a pair of short fanfares which were never published and could not be tracked down.

Admittedly I have yet to hear it, but in prospect this is a really exciting release. Judging by their performances on the new choral CD, the Gothenburg orchestra is a fine, full-size ensemble and I know that Henrik Schaefer is completely in sympathy with Raff's idiom. Not only is the recent De Profundis evidence of that, but I saw him conduct a blazing Im Walde a few years ago in Sweden. Avrohom Leichtling's exhaustive and fascinating 22 page essay for the booklet is, once again, an absolute tour de force.

I'm not sure how long we will have to wait, but I suspect it'll be weeks rather than months.

[Alan Howe]

Oooh, more Raff goodies. Lovely jubbly! Thanks for the advance notice, Mark! And hats off to Bo Hyttner for getting this music recorded. I suspect that the much fuller picture we are going to have of Raff will finally demonstrate the range and depth of his abilities as a composer.

[petershott@btinternet.com]

Crikey - "lovely jubbly" is a most serious understatement! And isn't it just astonishing how very quickly, on the basis of new recordings, Raff has been catapulted from neglected and unsung to widely recorded in just a few years? Yes, astonishing, for I can't think of another composer who has been fortunate to experience anything like the same reversal of fortune. Tremendous!

But a long way to go for Raff isn't yet a household name or frequently performed in concert (at least in the UK). A few days ago I chuckled over Semloh's observation that perhaps the time has come when Raff can no longer be regarded as an unsung. Utter tosh, Semloh, for (gawd forbid!) we don't yet hear snippets of Raff on FM4, TV advertisements, or as background mush in airplanes or rail stations. If Raff takes his rightful place as a major composer then, poor fellow, he deserves the same treatment as other major figures.

This recording of the orchestral intermezzi from Welt-Ende is surely going to be a pretty major Raff event? But one initial reaction is excitement tinged with some disappointment. If we've got the treat of a double CD, and 95 minutes of music, then.....yes, you've got it, why not the whole work? Do these nine orchestral intermezzi stand on their own feet so to speak, or are they chunks of the oratorio rather cruelly torn out of the whole work? Are there good reasons why the whole work isn't given? Please Mark, don't think I'm ungrateful (quite the contrary). But I'm wondering whether this hugely valuable and welcome release might give us a tantalising glimpse of what might have been?

But what a tremendous CD cover!

[Mark Thomas]

why not the whole work?

It would be a costly enterprise, Peter. Welt-Ende would fill two CDs and needs not only a choir and a mezzo-soprano soloist, but also a top notch baritone principal.

The recording was always conceived as a purely orchestral one and, yes, the intermezzi are genuinely free standing, purely orchestral episodes, conceived as such by Raff as part of his scheme for the Oratorio. Why only 95 minutes on two CDs? In truth, the recording was conceived as filling one CD, but there was time in the studio sessions to record all nine intermezzi, not just the selection which Sterling had planned. Secondly, the two Bernhard von Weimar marches proved to be rather bigger compositions than had been assumed when the recording was planned. Rather than withhold something, Sterling has generously decided to spread all the music over two CDs. I don't know how the double album will be priced, but I don't think that it'll be twice the price of a single Sterling album.

[petershott@btinternet.com]

Thanks Mark for a very full reply. Yes, I'm reassured - and actually you've given reasons why, rather than gently chide Sterling for failing to record the whole work, we should in fact be especially grateful to them - all nine Intermezzi rather than the ones previously planned and then some additional works on top of them. No grumbles whatsoever from me!

But I am of course left with heart-fluttering fantasies! A clearly major full length late Raff work requiring a mezzo-soprano, a top-notch baritone, chorus and orchestra.....ooooooh! I would vow to give up all my wicked ways if, after a decent time in which Sterling had unlimited opportunity to sell this set in plenty, someone like Chandos would come along and offer the full Chandos works to the whole Oratorio. Wouldn't that be something! Golly, the thought of it!

[Mark Thomas]

Welt-Ende is an odd work. It's hardly a typical 19th century Oratorio, even for the final quarter of the century. For a start there are those orchestral intermezzi, which account for a third of its length. They and the choruses, roughly another third, illustrate the recitative narrative of the baritone, Johannes (St John), who delivers extracts from the biblical Book of Revelation. There is a small part (A Voice) for a mezzo-soprano, but the baritone dominates the work. Those lengthy stretches of recitative are an old-fashioned device for the 1880s. The choruses are more contemporary in feel but, this being Raff, are liberally laced with counterpoint and fugue, which can make them sound somewhat archaic in the wrong hands. On the other hand the intermezzi are strikingly forward-looking and I suspect that their use on such a large scale as a structural device was unique at the time. Raff uses three or four readily identifiable leitmotivs throughout the work, which marries nobility in the vocal numbers with theatricality in some of the orchestral ones. In short, like so many of Raff's compositions, it is looking back and forward at the same time. At its English premiere in Leeds in 1883, Arthur Sullivan apparently couldn't understand the piece at all.

[Alan Howe]

Mark hits the nail on the head: Raff is a composer who embodies both the classical and progressive impulses in music in a fascinating and wholly unique manner. I'm convinced that at least part of the reason for the demise of his reputation following his death was that he simply didn't fit into the neat categories of classicist or progressive - something of which he himself was all-too aware. It was the generation that came after him that was able to carry off this balancing act far better - possibly because by then the battles of the past seemed passé and irrelevant.

[giles.enders]

I don't know any of these works but I shall certainly purchase this.  Thanks to Sterling I have made some very pleasurable discoveries and incidently I like their cover pictures.

[petershott@btinternet.com]

Anyone happen to know when this new Raff disc will be released? I've been eagerly scanning 'new releases' ever since Mark told us of this (very exciting) disc at the end of January...but so far no actual release. I guess it is early days yet and I'm just impatient - but that is what Raff does for you!

[Mark Thomas]

   Ooo, that's very spooky, Peter! I had just begun this reply, notifying of a projected April release date, when up popped your post!

I have now heard an early mix of this double CD set and I am hugely impressed with the performances by the Gothenburg Opera Orchestra and by Henrik Schaefer's interpretations. No Raff enthusiast will be disappointed, I can guarantee.

[petershott@btinternet.com]

Many thanks Mark. The release might, hopefully, coincide exactly with my birthday...so I'm going to be extraordinarily busy in the next few weeks reminding my wife that more Raff is on the way!

And I'm inclined to think, Mark, that from what I know of the works on the forthcoming disc, and performances given by Gothenburg Orchestra and Henrik Schaefer, your guarantee (now in writing) of a Raff enthusiast's absence of disappointment is rather superfluous!

[Peter1953]

Thanks Mark for your interesting information. A mouthwatering release I suppose, which could very well be in time available for me as a birthday present too, Peter.  And I like the somewhat spooky, mysterious sleeve design. Very eye-catching.

[petershott@btinternet.com]

Allow me to pose an easy, and possibly dumb, question whilst all these Raff posts are flying through the ether. The recent Sterling release of the Te Deum, De Profundis, and some short unaccompanied choral works comes along with an utterly marvellous booklet - 31 pages (in crystal clear font) containing a thoroughly detailed account by Avrohom Leichtling of each work. Actually I can't praise this enough: we don't get any of the frequently bland (or plain bonkers) stuff that is to be found in many CD booklets. It is wonderfully informative, thoroughly intelligent, and perfectly accessible to those who (like me) lack any training in musical discourse. An absolute model of its kind. (There are the few 'typos' - Raff apparently was a Catolic - but no matter!)

Now for the question, and a very obvious one. All these 31 pages are in English. That is fine for lazy, parochial fellows such as myself whose language skills are pretty limited. But does it mean Sterling also produce the same booklets in, say, French and German? And if so. does that not add considerably to the cost of manufacture, and does it not create difficulties in sales over an international market? And if it is indeed the case that all booklets are in English then is that not rather prejudicial to readers whose language is not English?

Apologies - an obvious and maybe a somewhat silly question that has nothing to do with Raff, music, let alone unsung composers. Perhaps it should be struck off!

Incidentally the playing time of this wonderful disc is 79'59. Isn't that something of a record (sic)? If so think of how immensely chuffed Raff would be in thinking of his music breaking records 131 years after his departure from us.

[TerraEpon]

What an interesting coincidence this thread is bumped and I read it just as I'm listening to the wonderful Violin Concerto/Suite disc...

Can't wait for more Raff from them.

Incidentally the playing time of this wonderful disc is 79'59. Isn't that something of a record (sic)? If so think of how immensely chuffed Raff would be in thinking of his music breaking records 131 years after his departure from us.

Hardly. I have a number of CDs over 80 minutes. It's true it used to be the limit, but about 2000 or so they started pushing it. The longest disc I have is 82:27, which is on the Sibelius Edition Vol. 1 from BIS (who contributes probably half or more of my 80+ minute discs). I believe I once read from Robert van Buhr (who is BIS's founder and runs the company) that the maximum is 82:30 (and indeed said disc doesn't have silence at the end like other BIS discs do).

[Mark Thomas]

I'm loath to reply on Bo Hyttner's behalf but, as he isn't a  member here, I'll do so. I understand that Sterling's main markets are Scandinavia (understandably), Germany and the English speaking countries. Bo canvassed opinion on the idea that booklet notes could be more extensive if they were only in English and his distributors confirmed that it really wasn't an issue as in all Sterling's markets English is at least the second language. Not only does it mean that we can be treated to extensive notes such as Avrohom's but it also means that Sterling saves on the sometimes considerable cost of translation. There have been no complaints and sales don't appear to have been affected. I can't deny that it is prejudicial to customers whose first language isn't English, but it is a practical trade off which does bring some benefits to most customers and doesn't appear to have caused a problem. The booklet for this new release, by the way, is also by Avrohom and is similarly extensive at 30 pages. I'll pass on to him your very kind comments, Peter, about his notes.