Joseph Joachim Raff: Cello Concerto No. 2 in G Major, WoO. 45
Joseph Joachim Raff (1822-1882)
Cello Concerto No. 2 in G Major, WoO. 45
I. Allegro
II. Andante 10:08
III. Allegro vivace 19:35
Daniel Müller-Schott, cello
Bamberger Symphoniker
Hans Stadlmaier, conductor
Raff was born in Lachen in Switzerland. His father, a teacher, had fled there from Württemberg in 1810 to escape forced recruitment into the military of that southwestern German state that had to fight for Napoleon in Russia. Joachim was largely self-taught in music, studying the subject while working as a schoolmaster in Schmerikon, Schwyz and Rapperswil. He sent some of his piano compositions to Felix Mendelssohn who recommended them to Breitkopf & Härtel for publication. They were published in 1844 and received a favourable review in Robert Schumann's journal, the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, which prompted Raff to go to Zürich and take up composition full-time.
In 1845, Raff walked to Basel to hear Franz Liszt play the piano. After a period in Stuttgart where he became friends with the conductor Hans von Bülow, he worked as Liszt's assistant at Weimar from 1850 to 1853. During this time he helped Liszt in the orchestration of several of his works, claiming to have had a major part in orchestrating the symphonic poem Tasso. In 1851, Raff's opera König Alfred was staged in Weimar, and five years later he moved to Wiesbaden where he largely devoted himself to composition. From 1878 he was the first Director of, and a teacher at, the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt. There he employed Clara Schumann and a number of other eminent musicians as teachers, and established a class specifically for female composers. (This was at a time when women composers were not taken very seriously.) His pupils there included Edward MacDowell and Alexander Ritter.
He died in Frankfurt on the night of June 24/25, 1882.
Once he had completed the manuscript of his Cello Concerto No.2 in G, Raff seems to have made no effort to get the work performed. It remained unplayed and unpublished until 1997 when it was both published and premiered. Raff's indifference is extraordinary when one remembers that it was written when he was at the height of his fame and had been preceded by a very successful First Concerto, but the reason for its neglect may well have been a rift between the composer and the cellist for whom he wrote the work.
David Popper (1843-1913) was a Bohemian virtuoso who became the foremost cellist of his day. As early as 1865 he had written to Raff describing the thought of the composer writing a concerto for his instrument as "belonging to my most ideal dreams" and wishing that it could be "transform[ed] into beautiful reality". Nothing came of Popper's youthful wishful thinking and it was over a decade later in 1876, when both men were at the height of their fame, before Raff started to create his "beautiful reality".
Letters between the two men make it clear that Raff did compose the G major concerto expressly for Popper, although who or what prompted the move has yet to be discovered. In September 1876 Popper wrote, "I have already worked in detail on your Concerto, dearest master ... [and it] offers no substantial difficulties". A month later, he wrote impatiently "with longing I look forward 14 days for the score. What is the reason for the non-appearance?". No more correspondence between them has come to light and one wonders what happened once the score arrived. Clearly some problem developed between the two men, the memory of which was sufficiently painful for Raff to put the manuscript quietly to one side. Unfortunately he had a similar experience with his Second Violin Concerto only a year later. It was written for Pablo Sarasate who also suddenly and inexplicably lost all interest in the piece.
- www.raff.org
Пікірлер: 25
Sublime, j'ai adoré chaque mouvement 🙏🎶💓🎶✨
Thanks for this upload! It fills a void in the online discography of an underrated and unjustly neglected composer! Ted Wilks
Very enjoyable and melodic concerto. I will check out his other concertos. Thank you for uploading this.
Thank you much for sharing this beautiful gem of a cello concerto. I am enjoying it immensely.
@brianknapp8645
9 жыл бұрын
Just one more thing. I think that Raff's slow movements are the most beautiful in the repertoire.
Raff begins to be known by his large corpus of symphonies - most of them with subtitles - but his concerting literature is abolutely unknown - just as his chamber music. Personnally, I knew only his delicious ode to the spring for piano and orchestra. Here, we have his second cello concert with a very solid writing and architecture, a noble expression. The slow movement is very lyric but with some restraint and the finale is awesome. Thank you for having posted it.
Magnifico Daniel Muller-Smith. Aéreo, seguro. delicado, alegre y siempre a tempo. Gracias.
Neither - keep your head down, fly under the radar, and keep "feeding" us all wonderful and [often] rarely heard music!!! Ted
Thanks for your comments. I understand Bo Hyttner's copyright position, and I think that he is perfectly justified; hard-working musicians deserve to be paid and Bo is trying to make a living. Nevertheless, some Sterling-label CDs have been uploaded. Similarly, I know about whom Hyperion shut down and why, as I'm sure do you. Companies have the right to practice "due diligence"; in defiance, some folks desire to make beautiful music available to all music-lovers. It's a "cat and mouse" game! Ted
Joachim Raff-Meisterkonzerten:Cellokonzert Nr.1&2 #윤희강#Yuntoll Violinkonzert Nr.1&2 Klavierkonzert c-moll *Klavirkonzertstück G-dur Die Tageszeiten-Konzertfantasie in vier Sätzen(für Klavier, Chor & Orkest)
sublime
I just uploaded 'Fée d'amour' without a hitch. I uploaded the ur-Violin Concerto No. 1 a few months back. Apparently Sterling is happy with getting ad revenue from my work, (which suits me just fine), or the waiting period expired. Whatever. However, Tudor gave me a copyright strike for the 1st Cello Concerto and 2nd Violin Concerto last year. Fortunately, I was able to find another platform for the violin concerto, and someone has uploaded a fine live performance of the cello concerto. For some reason, Tudor didn't have any problem with this video, despite the fact that the source for this and the blocked video are the same.
wonderfully completed concerto
The D minor Concerto is more dramatic, but this one has some beautiful melodies and some very catchy rhythmic gyrations.
I just had to delete a nice video of the Oehms CD of the Fitzenhagen Cello Concerto No. 2 as soon as I uploaded it. Which is a shame, because there is a dearth of quality cello concertos in the repertoire, especially from the Romantic era, and they aren't going to get exposure from some obscure CD on a podunk label. KZreadrs may not always buy, but some do, and getting the music heard could lead to more frequent performances by more cellists and orchestras.
@ewaldsteyn469
6 жыл бұрын
Johann Rufinatscha I 100 % agree with you. Those recording labels who don't want recordings of the music of lesser known composers be made available on KZread, are shortsighted. How else do they expect people to get to know this music? Over the past 3 years, and for the quite forseable future, 80 % of the music I buy are from so-called lesser known composers. Already bought music of Myaskovsky (all 27 his symphonies), Eduard Tubin, Levi Madetoja, Guarnieri, Villa-Lobos, Casella, Malipiero, Jaan Raats, Reimo Kangro, Romualds Kalsons, etc. And have in my sight music of Ferdinand Ries, Raff, Reinecke, Dreaeke, Bruch (his symphonies), Uuno Klami, Erkii Melartin, Jonas Kokkonen, etc. And ALL of this because I was first able for familiarize myself with their music through KZread. Without KZread I would not have bought music of any of these composers. Thank you therefore for people like you who load this music on KZread. You render to classical music and music lovers a great service, more than the recording labels ever will give you credit for.
@gasparocelloman9852
4 жыл бұрын
Ewald Steyn 27 Symphonies?! Wow, I have some catching up to do.
@johannrufinatscha4210
4 жыл бұрын
@@gasparocelloman9852 I think I've uploaded a couple. Some of my favorite Myaskovsky symphonies are the 5th, 15th, 21st, and 27th.
I don't know whether to squeak or meow!
Meister Cellokonzerten: Antonín Dvořák h(b)-moll Cellokonzert Joachim Raff Cellokoncert Nr.1&2 Joseph Haydn Cellokonzert Nr.1&2 Robert Schumann a-moll Cellokonzert Edward Elgar e-moll Cellokonzert
Cello Concerto no. 1 got taken down?
@johannrufinatscha4210
6 жыл бұрын
Im Walde Yep. I'm wondering why they didn't take this one down. I now have one strike. They also took down the Violin Concerto No. 2. I'm thinking of making this private for a few months.
@ImWalde
6 жыл бұрын
The Stadlmair recording of Raff 3 also got taken down kzread.info/dash/bejne/dICmysd6drbflpM.html Seems that the Tudor Label is taking the videos down?
@JAMESLEVEE
6 жыл бұрын
Im Walde Yep. It seems that they have gotten active again. Maybe they got some legal advice to start a crackdown. It does seem rather random, though.
What a shame! TW