Raff Piano Concerto with Tra Nguyen (Grand Piano label)

[adriano]

Very  happy to see that this CD is available now, I have just ordered a copy and I am sure it will be great!

http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2018/Feb/Raff_PC_GP771.htm

[Mark Thomas]

Hmm, not the most enthusiastic review 

[FBerwald]

One would have to be really jaded not to be moved by this concerto.. even for the most hard-nosed listener, the beauty of this concerto should be apparent.

[adriano]

Don't worry, Mark
As you will read in my today's e-mail to you, reviewers are a very particular sort of human (or unhuman) beings. They really believe to be ominscient and powerful. Since I am doind recordings I have to be faced with many capricius, grotesque - and often totally wrongly founded judgements...

[Alan Howe]

The reviewer's just plain wrong, Mark. Cloth ears and all that...

[Mark Thomas]

Thanks all. I'm not in the least bit discouraged, although I do feel a bit disappointed for Tra, who is hardly mentioned.

[Alan Howe]

I trust you're archiving all the positive reviews...

[Gareth Vaughan]

This is rather a silly review. One knows straightaway that we are in the hands of a musical lightweight when such phrases as "hasn't really stood the test of time" (like Bach's music, I suppose, until it was championed by Mendelssohn!!) and "doesn't really appear to have that much truly individual to say" (as if individuality – of which, I aver in any case, Raff has plenty – was a musical virtue of itself: so, everyone who sounds like Mendelssohn, or Brahms, or Schumann, etc. is somehow second or third rate!!) appear. These are ancient, and surely by now discredited, tropes. The author implies that Raff did not write memorable music – cloth ears indeed! The sinuous, muscular theme of the first movt. of the piano concerto is one that captivated me the very first time I heard it (back in the early 1970s on that old Genesis disk) and became for a while quite an "ear-worm". I still have no difficulty in bringing it to mind. That's just one example. I won't bore members of this forum by enumerating others.

Then we have the statement: "The Internet is full of performances of obscure Romantic piano concertos, by composers many of us have still never heard of, and the vast majority of these works frankly would seem to leave Raff's somewhat-reserved offering lightyears behind..."  To which I would say: "...'the vast majority' – Really? Do you seriously mean that? Have you listened to so many of them? I simply don't believe you are in a position to make that comment. Anyhow, name a few of these 'obscure composers' whose offerings are so superior to that of Raff, please, and attempt to say why they are superior, taking care to compare like with like, of course." The paragraph ends with a singularly irrelevant reference to Lalo's Symphonie Espagnole, a concertante work for violin and orchestra. Pardon me, but I thought we were talking about piano concertos.

It is an odd reviewer who makes no mention of the performers: no comments on Tra's playing or that of the orchestra. And he clearly has done no research, otherwise he would have known that Tra had already recorded the Suite for piano & orchestra, which he suggests would have made a better coupling for the concerto.

One concludes that Mr Buttall is not someone whose opinion we need take very seriously. Let us ignore him and move on.

[Alan Howe]

Well said, Gareth. The review is a blot on MusicWeb's landscape.

[adriano]

Bravissimo, super text, Gareth :-)
I was not in a mood of complaining to MW myself, but felt furious...
And just today I had to make a clarifying observation to another MW writer concerning another CD review... And this not the first time I dare to write...

[MartinH]

Any review of Raff that spends so much time going over his biography, restating for the zillionth time that he was a forgotten composer tells me that the reviewer really isn't that knowledgeable about music and certainly hasn't explored the recesses of the literature.

Then this: "Mark Thomas...would seem to be a card-paying member of the Joachim Raff Supporters' Club." Ya' think! So he obviously didn't do much Raff research. Anyone who knows much about Raff at all knows that Mark Thomas is far from being a "card-playing member". Heck, he's the Big Time Dealer!

[Alan Howe]

In fact Mark is the prime mover and shaker as far as (recent) Raff recordings are concerned. What ignorance!

[Gareth Vaughan]

Absolutely! I forbore to comment on that obvious lacuna in the man's knowledge, otherwise my post might have become inordinately long!

[Revilod]

To say that Raff's concerto is light years behind the vast majority of obscure Romantic piano concertos by "composers many of us have still never heard of" is just nonsense. It's one of Raff's best works. It is very strong melodically, very well written and very well argued.I know it off by heart as, I'm sure, many of us do and perhaps Mr Buttall should have listened a few more times before pronouncing judgement.

[TerraEpon]

Well *I* love the CD. So nya on him.

And of course, funny how he mentions how the disc would have been better serviced by including the Suite instead of the Ode and Caprice....which of course has its only recording by Miss Nyugen. I just have to shake my head at that one.