Raff, J.: Symphonies Nos. 8 and 10

Album review

In the mid-nineteenth century, Joseph Joachim Raff was an enormously popular composer, hailed in some quarters as an equal of Brahms and Wagner, and his music was ubiquitous in Europe and the United States. But shortly after his death in 1882, his works fell into decline, and by the twentieth century his once enviable reputation had been reduced to a historical footnote. By the beginning of the twenty first century, however, his music found a new audience, and his tuneful and colorful works are gradually finding their place in the repertoire. Tudor's ambitious series of the 11 symphonies and other concert works gives evidence of Raff's renewed popularity, and this album of the Symphony No. 8 in A major, "Sounds of Spring," and the Symphony No. 10 in F minor, "In Autumn," provides good examples of the composer's mature style. These four-movement symphonies adhere to Classical models in their framework, and their graceful melodies and balanced developments are very much in the style of Mendelssohn and his contemporaries; yet their programmatic nature -- in this case, their rapturous evocation of the seasons -- marks them as unabashed Romantic tone poems, almost in spite of their symphonic forms. Hans Stadlmair and the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra deliver warm performances of these symphonies, and though the music is far from the work of a genius -- Raff seems to have been overrated in his time -- they treat it with respect and play with a radiant tone and buoyant rhythms that make these pieces pleasant to hear, if not compelling or profoundly moving. Tudor's reproduction is fine, with clear and vibrant sonorities.
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