Rufinatscha piano music from Innsbruck

[Alan Howe]

Well, my copy of the set has now arrived and I'm delighted to report that the music isn't played on a clattery historic instrument, but on a modern Steinway.
As for the music itself, I think it's fair to say that the way Rufinatscha develops his ideas is more interesting than the ideas themselves - which is not to say that they lack distinction (although he's not first and foremost a tunesmith here). In other words, it's the journey towards the destination rather than the stunning scenery at the outset that really captures one's attention. It's often quite serious music, this - putting one in mind somewhat of Brahms (although Rufinatscha is obviously from an earlier generation) - but I expect, as with much of his music, that these are compositions to live with, absorb and return to.
BTW there are nearly three and a half hours worth of music in this set. Much to listen to and come to terms with...

[Lionel Harrsion]

I think it's fair to say that the way Rufinatscha develops his ideas is more interesting than the ideas themselves

I agree there's nowt wrong in that.  It would put him in exalted company: one could say the same thing about Beethoven as often as not.

[Alan Howe]

...and if I'm going to hazard a guess at this early stage, the truly great work in this set is the Piano Sonata in D minor, Op.18. More when I can articulate what I think rather better than I can at present.

[Mark Thomas]

I'm really looking forward to getting my copy of the set. Great news.

[Peter1953]

My copy arrived yesterday, but so far I've listened only to a few pieces of the first disc. I'm immediately captivated by the opening of the Fantasie du printem[p]s. No doubt this will be a most wonderful collection of piano music. I'm sure I will be excited about the four piano sonatas and will give my opinion in due course. The booklet is loose included and thus can fall out easily. I see that Alan has translated the German text into English...

[Mark Thomas]

I've listened so far to the first disc and the last of the four piano sonatas - the op.18 in D minor - which opens CD 2. The five independent pieces and sets of six character pieces and of three marches which fill the first CD struck me at first hearing as lacking the individuality which one associates with Rufinatscha. They are unfailingly melodious and often quite introspective in a way which reminded me of Schubert, but on the whole the influence of Schumann and Brahms (they span Rufinatscha's whole career) is surprisingly clear. I don't intend to be critical, because this is lovely music, beautifully crafted, but from many of the orchestral works which we now know one is used to more surprises and independence of thought. The D minor Piano Sonata is another matter. This is no conventional heaven-storming virtuoso piece. I'd characterise it is a rhapsodic, serious work with no empty pianistic pyrotechnics, although plenty of challenges both technical and interpretive. In terms of mood, the four movements are all ruminative to varying degrees, all moderately paced. I assume that's what Rufinatscha intended, rather than the excellent Marlies Nussbaumer's interpretation. Overall, the fourth of Rufinatscha's sonatas has impressed me as a sober and honest work, lacking any artificiality. It'll take some time to know properly and I'm looking forward to that. Added to which there are the three earlier sonatas which I haven't even sampled yet.

[Peter1953]

Over the past days I've listened to the 3 CD's more than a few times. In general I think that all four piano sonatas are interesting works with a substantial body and featuring delicate and emotional, not rarely sombre moments. But what strikes me is that I hear almost constantly Schubert on the background, albeit less powerful, virtuosic and inventive. Are these works written by the same Rufinatscha of the grandiose, majestic symphonies 5 & 6? Maybe I'm unfair.

[Alan Howe]

No, I think you're being very fair, Peter. I hear a lot of Schubert too - and I also think that Rufinatscha is at his best in his symphonies, not in these sonatas, fine though they are.

[Mark Thomas]

Rufinatscha seems to be a composer who needs space to be express himself fully and the shorter span of these piano works doesn't give him that. I wonder what constrained him from writing for the piano  on a grander scale? Presumably the conventions of the day? That said, the sonatas in particular aren't insignificant music and the fact that they don't scale the heights of the later symphonies doesn't detract from his achievement in my view.

[eschiss1]

What were the conventions of the day, though? Both Brahms and Liszt (for instance) produced some fairly large sonatas between 1860 and 1880... as did others on both sides of the "War of the Romantics", I think... (then again, I don't know when these works were composed, just published.)

[Mark Thomas]

I take your point Eric. What I was thinking that the ready publishing market for piano music from a relative unknown centred on the salon and that a 45-50 minute long four movement sonata from the likes of Rufinatscha would probably have stayed in manuscript.

[Alan Howe]

Eric hits upon an important issue with Rufinatscha, i.e. knowing exactly when his music was composed. Thus, for example, we know from the sleevenotes accompanying this 3-CD set that the Op.3 Piano Sonata, published in 1847, was actually composed in 1835.
Even so, I find the piano sonatas to be almost 'private' music; all four carry dedications to particular individuals - Simon Sechter, Adolf Lorenz, Carl Georg Lick[e]l and Julius Epstein - but, far from being showpieces designed to show off the talents of their dedicatees, they are deeply serious and conservative in style.
We shouldn't forget, I think, that Rufinatscha's symphonies, while thoroughly individual, are also predominantly serious and conservative in style. Musically, Rufinatscha was more conservative than, say, Schumann - which explains the latter's description of the Op.3 Sonata as "quite absurd" (in German: "ganz albern" - which could also be translated as "quite inept/fatuous"). Remember Schumann was equally dismissive of the efforts of other more conservative composers, e.g. Moscheles and (Franz) Lachner.
Nowadays we tend to think of Schumann, perhaps, as being on the conservative side in the "Music Wars" of the mid-nineteenth century. And indeed, when compared to progressives such as Berlioz, Liszt, and Wagner, he was. What we forget in the process are the composers further to the musical right (as it were) and their attempts to preserve and extend the gains of the past, but in a respectful and conservative manner. That this was thought possible explains the compositional projects of composers such as Czerny, Lachner and Rufinatscha. For what it's worth, my take on what happened is that, ambitious though Lachner's and Czerny's attempts were to do this, both ultimately failed because they lacked the genius required. In Rufinatscha, however, we have precisely the sort of composer that we might previously have thought not to have existed at all - a composer to the right of those who came to be perceived as conservatives themselves, but who may yet have been a genius...

[eschiss1]

Interesting (though even Czerny's sonatas and other piano works were sometimes very ambitious- and while Spohr in his chamber works may have, I gather, wanted to go no further than Beethoven's early or middle quartets - probably early?... - Czerny might have been inspired a bit in his late sonatas by the Hammerklavier, for all I know- I need to look into that... And Ries also, quite possibly- I wonder; certainly he was, or claimed to be, there "at the creation" of that work, as the slow movement was modified - its first bar added- during publication).

Still, point taken )

[Mark Thomas]

An eye-opening and perceptive analysis, Alan, if I may say so. Thanks. I heard Schumann and Brahms in the piano music, and I still do, but maybe it's the same phenomenon we experience when we listen to Dietrich's Symphony and hear Brahms. In that case, what we hear is their parallel development of the heritage of Schumann. So, I guess that when I hear Schumann and Brahms in Rufinatscha I'm hearing all three's take on.... who? Schubert maybe, but can that be true of the Germans?

[Alan Howe]

I just think that what Rufinatscha takes from the past is much less of a 'stretch', while somehow remaining individual - although this shows more in the orchestral music than in his piano works. What it shows is that it isn't just obvious innovators who can be geniuses.