Raff/Järvi Chandos vol. 2 - Symphony 5 etc.

[Mark Thomas]

I have yet to hear even the sound bites and, frustratingly, will probably not be able to hear anything of this new release for another two weeks, but some time ago I talked about it with Avrohom Leichtling, who once again wrote the booklet notes for it. He had heard the complete recording and confirms that, in his opinion, it is as revelatory and "correct" as was Järvi's Second Symphony. I can't wait to hear it, but unfortunately I'm going to have to!

[Gareth Vaughan]

Avrohom is a great authority. I will try to listen to it - when I get it - with his ears. I guess we've all been brought up on the Herrmann and that is bound to colour, to some extent, our aural view of later interpretations.

[Alan Howe]

It works as a whole, though, Gareth. But it's a seat-of-the-pants performance. This is Raff red in tooth and claw, and it's not very often you hear his music played as though the players' lives depended on it.
I do understand about the first movement, though: I'm sure there's room for another, more yielding view.

[Gareth Vaughan]

Well, how nice it is that we are in a position to compare a number of different interpretations on disk - a situation we little thought, back in the 1960s and '70s, would ever obtain.

[Alan Howe]

Absolutely right.

[mbhaub]

Name any other work by any composer with so many different recordings that is completely absent from live concerts and ignored by mainstream orchestras and conductors. Frustrating, isn't it? Raff & Lenore deserve better!

[DennisS]

I too have just listened to the sound bites and echo what Gareth has said regarding the tempo of the first movement. I too feel that it is very, very rushed. I also feel that the 3rd movement also seems a little rushed - it's now quite a quick march indeed! It's difficult though to make an overall judgement of Järvi's interpretation without hearing the work in its entirety. For me personally, I have become very used to and very fond of the slower tempos in Stadlmair's version and I think I will have to listen a number of times to this latest version, trying at the same time to "forget" that I am used to hearing this music played at slower (much slower!)speeds. I have to say though that's it's great to have another interpretation on the market as it gives the listener free rein to choose the interpretation which is the most satisfying personally. I guess I'm saying that Järvi's interpretation needs to be approached with an open mind and has to be judged on its own merits.

[Alan Howe]

I think that's an understandable reaction, Dennis. All I can say is that one quickly gets used to the tempi and that the reward is a work that suddenly seems much less 'comfortable' and much, much more exciting - perhaps especially in the finale.

[Alan Howe]

Just one further thought: Dennis is onto something, I think - in that our problem is the tradition of Raff interpretation that has grown up in the past 30-40 years and which has tended to view him from a late nineteenth-century perspective, meaning in particular tempo choices that may work in Brahms but not in the leaner, more athletic music of Raff.

What I'd now like to hear is a conductor such as Chailly take up Raff and give the music just a little more time to breath. But not too much!!

Bottom line, though: this is great music given its head by Järvi. A knockout performance!

[Gareth Vaughan]

I think you've hit the nail on the head, Alan. In broad terms performance tradition in the first three quarters of the 19th century probably favoured faster tempi than we were used to until the likes of Roger Norrington came along and showed us how exciting Beethoven could sound if one followed something like the composer's metronome markings. (How dull and sluggish Klemperer's approach to the Beethoven symphonies seems now!)
I hope Jarvi will record Raff's No. 3 - all the signs are that that might be a spine-tingling performance.

[Alan Howe]

The reason I suggested Chailly rather than Norrington is that the latter seems to me to spoil the freshness of his approach to tempi by his absurd insistence on legato-destroying vibrato-less string playing. Chailly, on the other hand, has learned the lessons of HIP and applied them sensibly to the romantic repertoire. As for Klemperer - I agree, there's no going back; however, modern-day conductors could learn a thing or two from him about springing rhythms that make even slow tempi sound athletic. As evidence I would propose Klemperer's Beethoven 4 from the late 1950s (EMI/Philhamonia).

How I would love to have heard Abbado conduct Raff, but alas that was never to be...

BTW In Beethoven, conductors such as Scherchen and Leibowitz got there long before Norrington, as did Weingartner in Brahms. And Karajan didn't exactly hang around either, although his preference for saturated and blended textures was a major difference. In Raff, though, Järvi is the first to re-think the music along HIP lines, much to the music's advantage. I have never sat through Lenore and felt that the whole thing hangs together as it does under the great Estonian.

[FBerwald]

Alan, ... How on God's Green Earth do you go into MY head, read my thoughts and write them down   

[Gareth Vaughan]

I agree, Alan, about Klemperer's "springing rhythms", but as he got older he got slower and slower and his last Beethoven recordings are for me almost unlistenable to.
Like you, I wish Abbado had given us some Raff - that would surely have been inspiring. Let us hope that Chailly will, however.
I note that I have forgotten that Toscanini didn't hang about either, nor Beecham. Perhaps the taste for more leisurely tempi emerged in the 20th century, rather than the late 19th. Certainly Josef Holbrooke wanted conductors to "get a move on" with his music.

[Alan Howe]

You're right about very late Klemperer - his Beethoven from the late fifties/early sixties is already pretty stately, but the really late stuff (e.g. his final Beethoven 7) is virtually unlistenable, so slow is it. I too forgot to mention Toscanini.
I'd say the slowcoaches were a phenomenon of the mid-to-late 20th century and, of course, many conductors who worked well into old age tended to get slower anyway (e.g. Walter, Klemperer, Giulini, Celibidache). I wonder whether a case could be made for the notion that, because conductors have lived longer in the modern era, tempi have become slower? Of course, there are always exceptions - Toscanini, for example. 

[FBerwald]

I know I am way off the Raff/Järvi topic but since we seem to have temporarily diverged to "slow and fast conductors of music ",  Sir Charles Mackerras' version of Beethoven [from the Edinburgh festival] is pretty energy packed ... tempo wise as well as interpretation.