Joachim Raff - Welt-Ende, Gericht, Neue Welt

[patently_obvious]

Qobuz has it available already to stream, for those who Qobuz   

[Mark Thomas]

CD orders from jpc are now being shipped.

[Alan Howe]

My order's on its way.

[TerraEpon]

Ok gave this a listen. As usual for Raff, very good. Was worried about all the dialogue but no, it's recitatives. Whoops.

Of course as usual Amazon doesn't seem to want to have pages for CPO CDs any more for some reason, no idea what's up with that.

[Justin]

The recording is excellent. I still prefer the Lachen performance as I feel the baritone puts a bit more passion and feeling into it, but this CD is highly recommended for sound quality and hearing all of the orchestral textures.

[adriano]

@TerraEpon
Oratorios have usually recitatives and no dialogues :-)

[Gareth Vaughan]

Of course as usual Amazon doesn't seem to want to have pages for CPO CDs any more for some reason

They do have pages for CPO CDs, but I've noticed that for new releases Amazon seems to offer the downloads first and only list the physical product some weeks (or even months) later. I agree - it's an odd practice.

[Ilja]

Not all that odd from a retailer's perspective. Keeping inventory is expensive, so the more customers you can serve with the digital product, the less physical items you need to stock. Of course, one box of Raff CDs won't make a huge difference but across their entire catalogue...

[Gareth Vaughan]

You may well be right, Ilja. Although that doesn't explain why they don't simply invite customers to order the CD as soon as it is advertised on the Amazon website, telling purchasers it will be delivered when the physical item becomes available (as they not infrequently do with products from other labels) - they wouldn't be holding much stock then.

But all this is by the by...

[Alan Howe]

Frankly, I've given up waiting for the UK release of new cpo recordings on CD. I order them direct from jpc as soon as they come out in Germany.

[TerraEpon]

Not all that odd from a retailer's perspective. Keeping inventory is expensive, so the more customers you can serve with the digital product, the less physical items you need to stock. Of course, one box of Raff CDs won't make a huge difference but across their entire catalogue...

This, however, is Amazon which lists almost anything else. They are as a whole pushing toward digital but this isn't some small label that sells mainly from its website, this is CPO which for sure could be considered a major indie in the classicalsphere.

[Ilja]

I don't want this to escalate into another pointless discussion of economics, but it's good to realize that in commercial terms, classical music is minute at around one percent share of the music market. Of that, the independents are again only a small part.

One element to keep in mind also (and which I forgot in my earlier post), and which might explain Amazon's policy of pushing downloads over physical product is that the margin on downloads is generally higher. Not only because of inventory, but also because the costs of creating physical product are, by and large, higher than the price difference between CDs and downloads.

[Mark Thomas]

... and with that, let's focus on Raff and his oratorio, please.

[John Boyer]

The notes tell us the band is a HIP ensemble.  Hmmm.   Well, we'll see what that ultimately means when I listen to my copy tomorrow.   

[John Boyer]

I listened to Part 1 this morning. All in all it is a success. The vocal soloists are a bit too forward for my taste, but not excessively so, and the HIP orchestra doesn't lay on the HIPness much.  Like, they play like squares...you dig, Daddy-O?  And that's fine by me.

One of the things that really struck me while listening to it is how obviously it is by Raff. No other composer could have written this.  His style is as easily identifiable as Brahms or Mendelssohn.  Whatever accusations are made against him, that his music lacks identifiable character or has a generic 19th century sound is certainly not valid.

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Having now listened to the whole thing I was at first surprised at how low-key it was, which is really to its credit. Given the subject matter one might be tempted to write something bombastic and excessive, but Raff wisely avoids this.