Joachim Raff is a greatly under-regarded
romantic composer whose string quartets
provide a treasure trove of discovery.
The enterprising Swiss-based Tudor label
continue their strenuous efforts for
the composer’s rehabilitation. Their
catalogue includes a fine recording
of two of Raff’s quartets that earned
considerable praise when initially released
in 2000.
A quick glance at the
number of compositions that Swiss-born
Raff wrote, shows just how prolific
he was. Raff, who adopted Germany as
his home country, wrote over three hundred
works almost half of which were solo
piano pieces mainly intended for the
salon. Virtually all the opus numbers
prior to the Symphony No.1 in D ‘To
the Fatherland’ op.96 in 1863 were for
solo piano. The music lies midway between
Mendelssohn’s gentle romanticism of
old world classical form and refinement
and the poetic modernism of Liszt and
Wagner.
In his day Raff was
considered one of the foremost three
German composers, behind Wagner and
Brahms. Raff’s relative popularity in
part of the second half of the nineteenth
century waned considerably after his
death and very little of his music was
played for the next hundred years. The
subsequent obscurity of his works remains
unmerited, for his distinctive music,
as displayed on this Tudor release,
is of the highest quality. Thankfully,
record labels such as Tudor; Marco Polo,
AK Coburg and CPO are making inroads
to bring the music to a wider audience.
There is however a long way to go before
the talents of Raff become more accepted.
For example in one the foremost guides
to Compact Discs, Mendelssohn has in
the region of 150 entries, Brahms has
around 260 and Raff has no entries.
The catalogue of Raff’s
works after 1856, when he departed the
coterie of Franz Liszt in the musical
hotbed of Vienna for the relative calm
of Wiesbaden, reveals a classicist return
to time-honoured formal concepts as
far as his choice of genre was concerned.
Although Raff had composed the first
of his eight string quartets while still
in Vienna, most of his symphonies, his
concertos and the remaining chamber
music ranging from the Duo to the Octet,
were composed in Wiesbaden, in Germany.
At the beginning of
the 1870s Raff was among those composers
whose works were most often performed
in German-speaking countries. He
admirably satisfied the public demand
of the times and promptly published
one eagerly awaited work after another.
The confident and highly
lyrical String Quartet No.1 in
D minor was composed in Vienna,
in 1850. The four movement score has
a nocturnal atmosphere achieved by beautifully
arranged instrumentation and romantic
expression. Greatly indebted to the
late Beethoven quartets there is much
to remind one of Brahms who incidentally
at that time had yet to compose a work
for strings alone.
The exciting and dramatic
elements of the first movement are expertly
captured by the Milano Quartet and the
frenzied scherzo-like second
movement is performed with substantial
control. On my copy there was a brief
but uncomfortable blaring at point 6.03-6.05
(track 1) which rather spoiled my enjoyment.
The players are more than equal to the
demands of the astonishing slow movement,
with its orchestral dimensions, dissonances,
frictions and delays, as were later
to appear in the works of Wolf and Schoenberg’s
Verklärte Nacht. The final
movement - exhilaratingly performed
by the Milano Quartet - is a complex
tangle of contrapuntal motifs; a fantastic
cavalcade that might have originated
in a Schubertian fever.
Helene Raff in the
biography of her father maintained that
the String
Quartet No.7 ‘Die schöne
Müllerin’
was the most popular of all
Raff’s quartets. Apart
from using the same title as Schubert’s
1823 song cycle ‘Die schöne
Müllerin’
there is no other clear connection.
The score is overflowing with refinement
and charm but rather wanting in ardour
and adventure; a viewpoint that was
also often levelled at Mendelssohn’s
scores. The quartet eschews the traditional
sonata form and was described by Raff
as a ‘cyclical tone poem’. It also
fits the category of a ‘suite’ as
it is clearly divided into three large
movements, entitled: ‘The young man’,
‘The maid of the mill’ and the
‘Prenuptial party’ interspersed
with three shorter pieces in the form
of interludes.
The
Quartetto di Milano are convincing
throughout in a work that is memorable
for its mainly gentle pastoral
moods and textures. The opening
movement marked allegretto skips
along merrily despite one or two moments
of less than seamless playing. In the
second movement allegro the interlude
‘The mill’ the picture of the
rushing stream is marvellously evoked.
There is excellent playing in the melancholy
slow movement ‘The maid of the mill’
which is lovingly portrayed. The fourth
movement entitled ‘Restlessness’
is striding and airy, performed with
an underlying suggestion of menace.
The penultimate movement ‘Declaration’
which passionately portrays the two
lovers comes as a welcome relief. The
finale represents a party at the eve
of the wedding and here again there
is confident and ebullient playing.
The
Mannheim String Quartet also recorded
the String Quartet No.7 ‘Die
schöne Müllerin’, at
Baden-Baden in 2003, on CPO 777
003-2 c/w String
Quartet No.6 in C minor, ‘Suite in older
form’
Op.192/a. Both versions are well
performed and will provide satisfaction.
This splendid recording
will delight enthusiasts of chamber
music and will undoubtedly win Raff
many new friends. An impressively performed
and agreeably presented release from
the Tudor label.
Michael Cookson
Quartetto di Milano 
for
details
