Great Recordings You've Never Heard Of: Raff's Piano Concerto and Ode to Spring

[Ilja]

Dave Hurwitz's take on Raffs music for piano and orchestra here.

[FBerwald]

We could all use some more Raff in our lives. 

[Gareth Vaughan]

Hear, hear!

[Alan Howe]

Quite, but is this particular CD all it's cracked up to be?

Isn't this.... https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/8366240--joachim-raff-works-for-piano-and-orchestra ....the better choice ....?

[Gareth Vaughan]

Yes. Tra is more refined and elegant - but for sheer barn-storming excitement (pace its shortcomings) I do enjoy Ponti's performance on the old Vox/Turnabout label.

[Alan Howe]

It's also the coupling, i.e. the Ode to Spring, that makes Tra Nguyen's CD a direct competitor to the Aronsky. I just can't see why Hurwitz would favour the inferior product. Ignorance, perhaps?

[John Boyer]

[...] but for sheer barn-storming excitement (pace its shortcomings) I do enjoy Ponti's performance on the old Vox/Turnabout label.

Agreed, it's the Ponti I return to -- for both works -- again and again.   

[Alan Howe]

I must dig out his account...

[terry martyn]

Ponti is a bit like Marmite.  I am one of his fans, and I love the free-flowing style of his Raff.  (By the way,in reference to his Bronsart,it storms along in such a compelling way that I will not (pace semloh) be relegating it to the back shelves.)

[Mark Thomas]

I'm rather late to this party! Well, as you'd expect my preference is very firmly Tra Nguyen's accounts of both works for Grand Piano and I do find Hurwitz's choice of the rather staid and careful Aronsky interpretations perplexing, especially as the orchestral contribution on Tra's recording is so much more vital, her pianism more nuanced and the recording more vivid. I'm biased of course, as I was very closely involved in the production and the most thrilling musical experience of my life was to be Tra's page turner for the Concerto recording.

Ponti, as Terry rightly says, is very much a Marmite character (and I do like Marmite). The Vox/Turnabout recording of the Raff concerto is certainly one of his best (definitely avoid his later one with the Plauen orchestra under Theissen on the Dante label) but his interpretation is still wayward, the recording is a long way from modern quality and the Hamburg orchestra is scrappy. These are typical shortcomings in his catalogue, so whilst I do recognise the adrenalin thrill of Ponti's playing, the only recording of his which I listened to regularly in recent years was the Bronsart concerto and that's now been superseded for me by both Wee and Triendl.

[Alan Howe]

Tra's recording's the modern-day 'Reference Recording', surely...

[Gareth Vaughan]

Oh, without a doubt.

[Ilja]

For me, it's still a toss-up between Tra and Antonioli. The interpretations are basically identical, and although the Lausanne Orchestra is the more lyrical of the two, the Prague one is slightly better recorded. Not much in it.

[Alan Howe]

But Aronsky's definitely inferior...

[Ilja]

A sincere effort, but not particularly inspired, and further hampered by dull sonics. A sort-of anti-Ponti: where Ponti is perhaps too idiosyncratic, Aronsky remains rather too staid. Tra and Antonioli are in a different league.