Joseph Joachim Raff (1822 – 1882) was a German-Swiss
composer, teacher and pianist 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 ...(+)
Joseph Joachim Raff (1822 – 1882) was a German-Swiss
composer, teacher and pianist 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.
Raff was very prolific, and by the end of his life was
one of the best known German composers, though his work
is largely forgotten today. (Only one piece, a cavatina
for violin and piano, is performed with any regularity
today, sometimes as an encore.) He drew influence from
a variety of sources - his eleven symphonies, for
example, combine the Classical symphonic form, with the
Romantic penchant for program music and contrapuntal
orchestral writing which harks back to the Baroque.
Most of these symphonies carry descriptive titles
including In the Forest (No. 3), Lenore (No. 5) and To
the Fatherland (No. 1), a very large-scale work lasting
around seventy minutes. His last four symphonies make
up a quartet of works based on the four seasons. Arturo
Toscanini conducted some performances of the Symphony
No. 3 In the Forest in 1931.
The Lenore symphony (No. 5), famous in its time, was
inspired by a ballad of the same name by Gottfried
August Bürger that also inspired works by several
other composers, including Maria Theresia von Paradis
(1789), Henri Duparc, Franz Liszt (late 1850s,
mentioned by Alan Walker in his Liszt biography vol.
2), for example. The world premiere recording of Lenore
was made during May 27–29, 1970, by the London
Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Bernard Herrmann,
who championed Raff's orchestral music. He described it
as "one of the finest examples of the Romantic
Programme School - it deserves a place alongside the
Symphonie fantastique of Berlioz, Liszt's Faust
Symphony and the Manfred Symphony of Tchaikovsky".
Richard Strauss was a pupil of Hans von Bülow, a
friend of Raff's, and it has been said that Strauss was
influenced in his early works by Raff. For example,
Raff's Symphony No. 7 In the Alps (1877) could be
compared with Strauss's An Alpine Symphony (1915). Much
of Raff's music has been said to forecast the early
works of Jean Sibelius.
Raff also composed in most other genres, including
concertos, opera, chamber music and works for solo
piano. His chamber works include five violin sonatas, a
cello sonata, a piano quintet, two piano quartets, a
string sextet and four piano trios. Many of these works
are now commercially recorded. He also wrote numerous
suites, some for smaller groups (there are suites for
piano solo and suites for string quartet), some for
orchestra and one each for piano and orchestra and
violin and orchestra.
Source: Wikipedia
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joachim_Raff).
Although originally composed for Solo Piano, I created
this Interpretation of the "La Baccante" from 4
Galops-Caprices (Op. 5 No. 4) for String Quartet (2
Violins, Viola & Cello).
