Raff: Symphonies Nos. 3 And 10

Description

Joachim Raff (1822-1882)Symphony No. 10 in F minor, Op. 213, "Zur Herbstzeit" • Symphony No. 3 in F major, Op. 153, "Im Walde"Musical reputations are fragile. Joachim Raff is now remembered principally as the composer of a Cavatina, a salon piece, and as an assistant to Liszt in Weimar, little more than a foot-note in the history of the symphonic poem. In his own time he enjoyed very considerable renown, justified, it seemed, by a prolific talent and by his distinction as a teacher.Raff was born in Lachen, near Zürich, in 1822. His father had taken refuge in Switzerland, leaving Württemberg to avoid conscription into the French army. Raff’s early education was at Wiesenstetten, in Württemberg, followed by a period of teacher-training at the Jesuit Gymnasium in Schwyz, where he won prizes in Latin, German, and Mathematics. Thereafter he took employment as a schoolmaster, while working hard at his private studies in music. Mendelssohn, whom he had approached, recommended him to the attention of the Leipzig publishers Breitkopf and Härtel, who issued sets of his piano pieces in 1844, the year in which the young composer resolved to try his luck in Zürich.Raff’s contact with Liszt began in 1845, when he walked to Basle to hear the latter play. He then accompanied Liszt on his concert tour, and followed this, through the agency of Liszt, with work in Cologne, in part as a critic and less significantly in a music-shop. He then moved to Stuttgart, where he met Hans von Bülow, who remained a close friend in the years that followed, and Mendelssohn, accepting the latter’s offer to teach him in Leipzig. Von Bülow, meanwhile, took Raff’s Concertstück for piano and orchestra into his repertoire, something that was of material assistance in furthering the composer’s reputation. The death of Mendelssohn in 1847 allowed Liszt a further exercise of patronage, in securing Raff work in Hamburg as arranger for a music publisher.In 1850 Raff moved to Weimar, where Liszt was now installed as Music Director Extraordinaire, occupied with the provision of music for the orchestra, and above all with the remarkable series of symphonic poems in which he sought to combine the arts of literature and music. At the Villa Altenburg, where he lodged, later joined by Hans von Bülow, Raff served the master as secretary, copyist and factotum, and must, initially at least, have had a considerable hand in the orchestration of Liszt’s work. Whether he was as important as he made out to his correspondents is open to question. "I have cleaned up Liszt’s first Concerto symphonique for him", he claimed in an early letter from Weimar, "and now I must score and copy Ce qu’on entend sur la montagne". He declared that the orchestration of Prometheus was his, for the most part, and that he had performed the same service for the symphonic poem Tasso. The violinist Joachim was later to repeat these claims o