Raff Piano Quartets from Divox

[Alan Howe]

Thanks for your support, Jim. 

[JimL]

You my take my support for granted.  Hopefully, things are getting locked down over there.  There has been no mention of it on the Net unless you search.

[Alan Howe]

Thanks for your support, Jim
It's all over the international press...

[JimL]

Well, the last couple of days I've been rekindling an old flame who flew out from Texas to see me over at the Wingate LAX.  So I haven't exactly been poring over the newspapers. 

[Alan Howe]

...while flames of a completely different kind have been devouring buildings and cars and threatening police, fire fighters and residents here.
Anyway, we're off into the battle zone (now thoroughly under police control) this evening to see our daughter...

[JimL]

Yes, I gathered what was going on from the papers, well after the fact.  No thanks to Yahoo, which seems to be avoiding the topic altogether.

The mayor of London is named Boris Johnson?  Wasn't that the name of the protagonist of Norman Spinrad's Agent of Chaos?

[eschiss1]

He was in the news around the time he was up for election, as I recall- well, maybe just in the news sources I tend to listen to.

[TerraEpon]

A shame this thread was derailed like that....

But man, people weren't kidding. This disc is truly wonderful, just tunes everywhere, and great music all around. And the liner notes are very thorough....

[Gareth Vaughan]

Raff's piano writing - always graciously pianistic - is frequently ferociously virtuosic and difficult. There can be no doubt that he possessed a prodigious technique. But this should not be cause for surprise when we remember that he admired and worked closely with Liszt for many years.

[Mark Thomas]

... and yet he only played in public a couple of times in his youth in Switzerland and didn't even compose at the piano.

[Gareth Vaughan]

I wonder if he suffered from the same nervous disorder that afflicted Adolphe von Henselt, reputedly a brilliant pianist (and certainly his compositions are not only thoroughly pianistic but thoroughly challenging) but quite unable to play in public!

[Mark Thomas]

There's no record of that and he certainly played in private performances of his chamber works. Also, not only did he address large gatherings as Director of the Frankfurt Conservatory, he also conducted quite frequently (and was good at it according to von Bülow, who should know), so I doubt that it was any variety of stage fright. IIRC (but I can't find the reference right now), he had a stiffness between a couple of fingers which he at least felt inhibited his playing, but I may be confusing him with someone else. I'll have to find that reference, now!

[JimL]

Schumann (Robert) messed up his hand (I believe the right one) with one of those contraptions (probably something along the lines of Kalkbrenner's guide des mains) which scuttled his hoped-for career as a soloist (and probably soured him on the likes of Herz et al!)

[Mark Thomas]

Yes, I know about Schumann, of course, and it wasn't him I was thinking of....