JOSEPH JOACHIM RAFF: The 11 Symphonies, the Suites for orchestra, Overtures – Bamberg Symphony / Hans Stadlmair – Tudor 1600 (9 CDs), TT: 10 hrs., 36 mins. [Distr. by Naxos] ****1/2:
The increasingly fatalistic Gustav Mahler was haunted by what was called “the curse of the Ninth.” Schubert, Beethoven, and Dvorak had all died after completing a ninth symphony; Louis Spohr abandoned his Tenth Symphony shortly before his death, never finishing it; and Bruckner of course died before completing his Ninth. (Forget for the moment his formerly unnumbered early symphonies later numbered 0 and 00.) Mahler attempted to outwit Fate by refusing to give his symphony-in-all-but-name Das Lied von der Erde a number, so his next numbered symphony (No. 9) was actually his tenth. As we know, despite his precautions, Mahler died before completing his nominal Tenth Symphony. As we also know, he left out of his calculations entirely the figure of Joseph Joachim Raff, who managed to complete eleven symphonies before his death in 1882. This says much about the wreck of Raff’s reputation, which started to pass into eclipse even during the composer’s lifetime.
It was not always the case. Raff’s long First Symphony, which won him immediate fame when it appeared in 1861, launched him on a career that was thought as impressive as that of Mendelssohn, Schumann, or Tchaikovsky. However, by the end of his life the number of Raff symphonies still in the repertoire had shrunk to the favored “named” symphonies, Nos. 3 and 5. Critics carped that he wrote too much music, in too great haste, and didn’t invest his heart in much of it. They also remarked the immediately obvious: that the largely self-taught Raff, while a master orchestrator and master of counterpoint, wrote music in which the lofty and the bathetic often jostle for the upper hand. In Raff’s symphonies, a noble first melody can be followed by an incredibly mundane second, a grandiloquent coda followed by a movement of salon-music triteness.
After all, by the 1880s Europe had models of what the high-Romantic symphony should sound like in the works of Brahms, Bruckner, and Dvorak. It had a prevailing seriousness of purpose that excluded overt tone painting and the kind of naïve enthusiasm that marks Raff’s symphonies and makes them closer in spirit to the symphonic works of Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Gade.
Fortunately, today the battle over the symphonic canon has been fought and won, and the battle between the Wagner-Liszt axis and the Brahmsian classical-Romanticists is a long-dead issue. We can take pleasure in the craftsmanship of composers whose works fell from grace along the way even if those works don’t represent the apogee of creation in their period of time. Such is certainly the case of Joachim Raff, whose rehabilitation started with the famous recording of the “Lenore” Symphony by Bernard Hermann back in the 60s. I remember when that recording came out, critics poo-pooed the work, saying that despite Raff’s supposed skills as a tone painter and orchestrator, the neighing-horse imitations in the last movement were no more advanced than those in Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. But the symphony won a loyal following, and pretty soon Raff was somebody that music lovers wanted to hear again.
The “Lenore” Symphony is probably still my favorite Raff work. Based on a ballad by eighteenth-century poet Gottfried Bürger, it retells the sad story of Lenore, whose beloved Wilhelm goes off to war and is killed in battle. He seems to return to Lenore, however, and she rides away with her supposed lover, who turns out to be old man Death bent on carrying her off to the grave. The first two movements of the symphony portray Lenore and Wilhelm’s happy love. The scherzo, a jaunty march complete with a very active snare drum, sees Wilhelm off to war, while the last movement is all about that jaunt to the crypt. It’s a sappy idea maybe, but other respected composers of the nineteenth century—including Liszt, Alkan, and Duparc—treated the ballad musically. And Raff manages to make those last two movements of his pretty exciting.
I suppose that like most nineteenth-century listeners, I favor next the Symphony No. 3. It paints a series of woodland scenes, capped by a finale that conveys the quiet of the nighttime forest interrupted by the wild noises of the hunt. For me, this movement is Raff at his best. But I admire other symphonies as well, the Fourth being another of my favorites. It might have been called Raff’s “Autumn” Symphony (though that honor falls to No. 10) since it’s as varied in mood as an autumn sky. It starts off in a somewhat troubled vein in the first movement, followed by a sunny and melodious second. In the third movement—dominated by a ceremonial, march-like theme—clouds descend toward the end only to be blown away in the dancing fourth movement. Without an overt program, the symphony still has a pleasing and convincing narrative arc.
The First Symphony, too, has a more abstract program than some of the later symphonies, but it’s easy to see that Raff is praising the traditions of his adoptive Germany (he was born in Switzerland) in music that is by turns noble, outdoorsy, and cozily domestic. The piece has a tendency to go on a bit; like Dvorak, Raff would become a much better self-editor as his symphonic career developed. But in its youthful enthusiasm, the symphony is kind of endearing, and you may end up liking it as well as some of the more accomplished pieces from Raff’s pen.
For me, there are some outright duds. Symphony No. 2, a more classically proportioned work than the First Symphony, is rather faceless, while the emotions that Raff tries to whip up in No. 6 seem sort of canned to me; as elsewhere in his works, he substitutes bombast for drama. And in his “Alps” Symphony, No. 7, Raff seems more interested in capturing the local color offered by the inhabitants of the region than the majesty of their surroundings. In the second movement, he takes us to an Alpine inn, while in the last movement he portrays a festival in lively fashion. It’s nice but no match at all for that other, much more famous Alpine Symphony.
The last four symphonies, portraying the seasons, are simpler, quieter affairs, with the pictorial tendencies of the earlier named symphonies somewhat generalized, yet they’re all entertaining and attractive. The Spring Symphony, No. 8, has a striking last movement again portraying the hunt, even though it recalls musical gestures going back more than a century. The first movement of the Winter Symphony, No. 11, effectively conjures the first snowfall of the season, while the corresponding movement in the Summer Symphony, No. 9, is a musical portrayal of a hot day. Does the big contrapuntal buildup in the climax of the movement, surmounted by piccolo squalls, portray a summer shower? Possibly; at any rate, it shows off Raff’s considerable skills at counterpoint, as do a number of other movements among the symphonies.
Then there are the symphonic suites, where Raff can fully exploit his pictorial impulses without the need for symphonic logic. Some of these are almost as appealing as the best symphonies, including the Orchestral Suite No. 1 and the very entertaining Thuringian Suite. On the other hand, the Italian and Hungarian Suites don’t seem to have much in the way of local color, so don’t expect the equivalent of the Italian Symphony or Brahms’s Hungarian Dances.
The shorter, incidental pieces don’t add a great deal to the collection but are mostly nice to have. The one area in which Raff did not distinguish himself was opera, and his overtures are as lackluster as his operas must be. However, Abends is a lovely, delicate short work, and the arrangement of Bach’s Chaconne showcases Raff’s skills as an orchestrator. Later arrangers of Bach’s work should have shown as much respect for the original as Raff did here.
As in Jonathan Nott’s ongoing Mahler symphony series, the Bamberg Symphony was Tudor’s go-to orchestra for its Raff project. While Principle Conductor Nott is credited with making great improvements in the Bamberger sound in recent years, the orchestra plays very well indeed throughout the Raff series, begun around 1998. A lot of the credit must go to Hans Stadlmair, former conductor of the Munich Chamber Orchestra and obviously a seasoned hand in the Romantic repertoire. He’s obviously also a Raff enthusiast, injecting as much life and soul into the music as it can legitimately accommodate. This is to say that sometimes Stadlmair and his band manage to make Raff sound more important than he ultimately is; lucky for Raff and for us!
The recordings, made over a stretch of years, are consistently very good, though lacking just a tad in detail and depth. For instance, the last movement of the Suite “Aus Thüringen” is the only instance where Raff calls for multiple percussion instruments, and these are somewhat shortchanged by the recording. However, string tone is unfailingly sweet, and the brass registers powerfully throughout, so I can’t complain too strenuously. By any measure this complete recording of Raff’s symphonies is an important achievement and one that probably won’t be surpassed—and won’t need to be, even for Raff enthusiasts.
Complete TrackList:
Disc 1: Symphony No. 1 in D Major, Op. 96, “An das Vaterland”
Disc 2: Symphony No. 2 in C Major, Op. 140; Suite for Orchestra “Aus Thüringen”
Disc 3: Symphony No. 3 in F Major, Op. 153, “Im Walde”; Italian Suite for Orchestra
Disc 4: Symphony No. 4 in G Minor, Op. 167; Overture “Benedetto Marchello”; Overture “Dame Kobold”; Overture “Die Parole”; Concert Overture, Op. 123
Disc 5: Symphony No. 5 in E Major, Op. 177, “Lenore”; Suite No. 1 for Orchestra, Op. 101
Disc 6: Symphony No. 6 in D Minor, Op. 189; Suite No. 2 for Orchestra, Op. 194, “In Ungarischer Weise”
Disc 7: Symphony No. 7 in B-flat Major, Op. 201, “In den Alpen”; Chaconne in D Minor BWV 1004 of Johann Sebastian Bach, Arrangement for Orchestra, WoO 39; Abends Rhapsody, Op. 163b
Disc 8: Symphony No. 8 in A Major, Op. 205, “Frühlingsklänge”; Symphony No. 10 in F Minor, Op. 213, “Zur Herbstzeit”
Disc 9: Symphony No. 9 in E Minor, Op. 208, “Im Sommer”; Symphony No. 11 in A Minor, Op. 214, “Der Winter”
– Lee Passarella
