Raff: La fée d'amour (The Love Fairy), A minor, op. 67 (1854)

[Toni]

The concert piece that the violin virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate played and loved most during his lifetime was La fée d'amour by Joseph Joachim Raff.  He played it with piano accompaniment as well as with orchestra. As unknown as this then successful concert piece has become in the meantime, its composer has also become unknown to many concertgoers. According to a contemporary English music critic, however, he was one of the three most famous German composers of his time: Joachim Raff was - astonishingly for us - the third most famous, along with Wagner and Brahms!  Today, his music is hardly ever played, although he left behind an enormous body of work.

The concert piece recommended here, La fée d'amour, received much praise from Liszt. Liszt thought Raff could rest on his laurels for a long time after such a work. The work was then performed again and again by its dedicatee Edmond Singer, the concertmaster of Liszt's Weimar orchestra. And - as mentioned - Pablo de Sarasate also loved to play it. Clearly, the theme is immortal, it is about love, which outlives all lovers and concert pieces. Raff wrote the piece for his engagement to Doris Genast. This composition was about "the inner experience of his engagement", his daughter later said.

I can only recommend this enchanting, formally original violin concerto by this musician, who was 32 years old at the beginning of his career. I would love to experience it live in concert.

More and a link to listen to
https://unbekannte-violinkonzerte.jimdofree.com/--2/raff/

[Alan Howe]

Thanks, Toni, and welcome to UC!

[adriano]

Dear Toni
Are you convinced that Raff's music is "hardly ever played" today??
Only look at the - at first slowly, but (since the coming up of CDs) rapidly constant increasing - quantity of recordings of his music since the 1980's!
See 
raff.org/index.html

[Alan Howe]

I think the issue is how much Raff's music is played in concerts. Here in the UK he might as well not exist...

[eschiss1]

NY City is a little luckier, with the octet having being performed by the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players in September (19th) last year (of course, it was his birth anniversary, which received some - small- amount of attention); they've already played his quintet and other works. The U. Wisconsin played his sinfonietta at the end of last February. But as to future concerts here, I don't know either.
(A search for this information does turn up by the way the fact that violinist Michaela Paetsch died toward the end of this past January, a fact I'm not sure was mentioned at the time, and unfortunate for Raff fans.)

[eschiss1]

There was also this post on Instagram by a conductor about a concert a few weeks ago with works by Raff and others in Switzerland. And checking the tag #JoachimRaff there turned up a couple of other things, like a late last year performance of "Abends" (with a 2.5 minute video excerpt). Concerts are rare but maybe picking up compared to a decade ago? I don't know.

[Alan Howe]

What would really raise Raff's profile in the concert hall would be some performances of his symphonies. But this doesn't just apply to Raff. Fortunately for home listeners the record companies are more adventurous than the concert promoters, but concerts (at least here in the UK) are more or less a desert as far as unsung orchestral music is concerned.

[eschiss1]

I prefer his best chamber music, but it's the symphony that catches the mind when classical music is mentioned, and one has to agree, yes...