Joachim RAFF (1822-1882)
Te Deum WoO.16 (1853) [10:05]
De Profundis, Psalm 130 op.140 (1867) [40:11]
Pater Noster WoO.32 (1869) [7:55]
Ave Maria WoO.33 (1869) [6:29]
Vier Marianischen Antiphonen WoO.27 (1867) [15:10]
Susanna Andersson (soprano)
Karlstad Kammerchör; Stockholm Singers
GöteborgsOperans Orkester/Henrik Schaefer; Bo Aurehl
rec. 25 May 2012, Gothenburg Concert Hall, 16-18 October 2011, Stora
Kil church, Sweden. DDD
STERLING CDS 1098 [79:59]
We have not been exactly overrun with recordings of this composer’s
music for choir and orchestra - still less his music for the church.
For this and other reasons this disc, arriving as part of Sterling’s
rather special Raff series (
CDS1085-2
~
CDS1089-2
~
CDS1075-2),
is multiply welcome.
The first two works are for voices and orchestra while the last six
are
a cappella.
We launch with a stirringly regal
Te Deum in three segments:
a clamorous and forthright
Te Deum laudamus, a romantic and all-but
Tchaikovskian
Te Ergo and a gloriously exciting
In Te Domine
speravi. It’s compact and enjoyably theatrical. Played to
an innocent ear audience I wonder how many would guess this was the
work of Raff.
This is followed by a seriously symphonic length
De Profundis.
It has an emotion-stilling orchestral introduction which is followed
by five meaty choral episodes. The writing sounds weightily Brahmsian
yet manages serenity also. The mood is suitably grave yet lightened
by many well calculated orchestral touches like the pizzicato near the
start of
Si inquitates and the jaunty fanfares that open the
fugal finale,
Et ipse rediment. Susanna Andersson can be heard
in the serenely ambling
Quia apud te - she is a devoted advocate
for this Mozartian music, if a little tremulous. Those who have a taste
for Brahms’
German Requiem should try this for a change.
It’s by no means the same but is in the same mood territory. Only
in the Allegro finale is the spell broken with a joyously active celebration.
Raff knows how to end proceedings in grandeur. One can see here part
of the mulch from which Schmidt’s much later
Book of the Seven
Seals sprang.
The
a cappella Pater Noster,
Ave Maria and
Vier
Marianischen Antiphonen are all prayerfully impassioned and are
redolent of the devotional music of earlier times - Raff connecting
with roots in the 16
th and 17
th centuries. The
final
Salve Regina - the last of the Marian Antiphons - is quite
delightful.
The orchestra gains an emphasis at times at the expense of the choir
which at various times I suspect could, with advantage, have been larger.
There were no such thoughts when it came to the purely choral works.
The disc is completed by a 32 page booklet stuffed to the edges with
useful and readable English-only notes by Dr Avrohom Leichtling.
Thus another portal is opened on Raff’s dust-covered heritage
to show us that he is not to be celebrated merely as the orchestrator
of the Liszt tone poems and the writer of eleven symphonies (
Tudor;
Marco
Polo).
For more about Raff don’t miss Mark Thomas’s Raff website
and the invaluable
Joachim
Raff Society where I learn that Sterling has recently completed
sessions for the final salvo in the series. It will involve a double
CD of orchestral music including Raff's orchestration and arrangement
of Liszt's
Prometheus
Unbound overture, the intermezzi from the
Welt-Ende oratorio
and a reconstruction of the incidental music to
Bernhard von Weimar.
Henrik Schaefer will again conduct the Gothenburg Opera Orchestra.
Rob Barnett
