J. Raffenbach

[John Boyer]

In recognition of Raff's 200th, I spent a week going through some of the recordings I don't visit as often as I should.  Included in this were the four discs of piano suites from AK Coburg, played by Alexander Zolotarev.  This time, though, I paid special attention to Raff's transcriptions of the Bach cello suites.  Does anyone else enjoy them as much as I do?  Raff essentially expands on what Bach merely suggests in his suites, filling in the harmonies, the implied counterpoint, and even constructing whole new melodies that are suggested in Bach's spare structure.  At the same time, Raff makes them sound perfectly idiomatic, as if these were original keyboard suites by Bach himself.  He never imposes a Romantic idiom on the music, the way Busoni might have.

If you haven't heard them in a while, they are worth taking another look at. 

[Mark Thomas]

John is spot on in everything he says, these are modestly self-effacing little miracles, not mere note-for-note transcriptions for the piano of Bach's originals. The idiom is faithful to Bach, but Raff is recognisably there too; some of the "implied" melodies which Raff supplies are typically gorgeous.

I have a limited supply of the AK Coburg Raff CDs, which are no longer available commercially. In addition to Raff's arrangements of the Bach cello suites they include all seven of his own Piano Suites, of course. See here for details of each CD. If anyone is interested in a set, or in an individual CD, please PM me.