Joachim Raff - Symphony No. 2; Shakespeare Preludes (Neeme Järvi)

Information

Composer: Joachim Raff

• Symphony No. 2 in C major, Op. 140
• Orchestral Prelude in G minor to Shakespeare's "The Tempest", WoO 49
• Orchestral Prelude in C minor to Shakespeare's "Macbeth", WoO 50
• Orchestral Prelude in D major to Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet", WoO 51
• Orchestral Prelude in D major to Shakespeare's "Othello", WoO 52

Orchestre de la Suisse Romande

Neeme Järvi, conductor

Date: 2012

Label: Chandos

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Review

I had to smile when, at around 12'09" into the Orchestral Prelude to The Tempest of 1879, I noted how the change of mood, colour and rhythm bears such a close resemblance to a similar contrast that occurs in the Allegro maestoso assai coda of Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony, completed some 35 years earlier. As with Mendelssohn’s best overtures, Joachim Raff’s Shakespeare Preludes exhibit a keen sense of dramatic narrative. The openings of both The Tempest and Macbeth are fraught with tension, the former on the wings of furious string figurations, the latter with spectral woodwinds. Romeo and Juliet feeds on motifs representing the lovers and the warring families they grew from. Chandos’s annotator, Dr Avrohom Leichtling, praises Othello for its dramatic compression (a feature throughout all four pieces), with some justification.

The C major Symphony is unusual on a number of counts, the most obvious being the way the Andante second movement erupts for its C minor middle section (at around 3'06"), replete with fugal development (a favourite Raff device), before calm is restored. And Raff’s general style? Various associations, both reflective and prophetic, suggest themselves throughout – the lightness of Mendelssohn, the harmonic richness of Schumann, Wagner for dramatic tone-painting, and Richard Strauss in embryo. Neeme Järvi and his Suisse Romande players seem to be having a whale of a time, or least that’s the impression that these extremely vital performances suggest. Comparisons with the forceful if rather harder-edged Slovak State Philharmonic under Urs Schneider (coupled with just Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth) and the able Bamberg Symphony under Hans Stadlmair (part of their complete Raff symphony cycle) incline me towards this very well-recorded new disc, a perfect place to dip a toe into Raffian waters.

— Rob Cowan

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Joachim Raff (27 May 1822 —  24 or 25 June 1882) was a German composer and teacher who was greatly celebrated in his lifetime but nearly forgotten by the late 20th century. Initially a self-taught musician, he was influenced by Mendelssohn and Schumann before aligning with Liszt and Wagner's "New German School". He served as Liszt's assistant in Weimar and later taught piano in Wiesbaden. From 1877, he directed the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt. A prolific composer, Raff wrote 11 symphonies, concertos, operas, choral, chamber and piano music. Many of these works are now commercially recorded.

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Neeme Järvi (born 7 June 1937 in Tallinn) is an Estonian conductor. He studied at the Leningrad Conservatory under Evgeny Mravinsky and Nikolai Rabinovich, among others. Järvi was Principal Conductor and Music Director of the Gothenburg Symphony (1982–2004), Royal Scottish National Orchestra (1984–1988), Detroit Symphony Orchestra (1990–2005) and Orchestre de la Suisse Romande (2012–2015), among others. He made over 400 recordings for labels such as BIS, Chandos and Deutsche Grammophon and best known for his interpretations of Romantic and 20th century classical music.

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