Raff Symphony 7

[Alan Howe]

I have been spending a lot of time (mostly in the car!) listening and re-listening to Raff 7 in the Schneider/Marco Polo recording. I have been astonished to find so much music in it which looks forward to later compositions - particularly by Dvorak, especially in nationalist mood. Maybe it's the open-air nature of Raff's symphony (the Alps being his inspiration) that puts one in mind of Dvorak. So much gorgeous orchestration and so many wonderful, unforgettable melodies too - it's hard not to love it, despite its length!

[Mark Thomas]

Obviously I'm not going to disagree with any of this, except that for me at least both the Stadlmair and Albert performances are overall streets ahead of Schneider's. Particularly in the second movement and the finale. In the third, Schneider's slow tempi pay dividends, however, and Stadlmair's fast pace counts against him.

[Peter1953]

I only have the Stadlmair, but In den Alpen is surely a delightful symphony. I don't mind its lenght of 42:25 at all!
On this CD is one of Raff's most tender and sensitive pieces I know, and that is Abends. What an utterly beautiful piece of music. Raff's op. 163b is one of the very few pieces of music that, under certain circumstances,  can drive me to tears.

[Alan Howe]

It's the matter of Raff's influence upon later composers which really interests me. It's impossible not to hear Dvorak in In den Alpen.

[JimL]

I have the Albert.  This makes me want to pull it out again.  It certainly is unique in Raff's symphonic output, being the only one of his symphonies with a slow introduction to the first movement, kind of like Bruckner's 5th in his ouevre.

[Alan Howe]

Schneider, Albert and Stadlmair will all reveal the magnificent orchestration and feeling for colour which, I believe, Raff developed as his symphonic career progressed. Whereas at one time I could only see decline in his symphonies after no.5, now I hear more than ever the elements which look forward to, especially, Dvorak and Tchaikovsky in terms of orchestral colouring. And that's to make no mention at all of Raff's own phenomenal ability in respect of melodic inspiration.

[Revilod]

Surely, in the effortless way in which he combines his tunes in the finale of the Seventh Symphony, Raff was demonstrating that he was as much a master of counterpoint as Wagner had shown himself to be in the Prelude to "Die Meistersinger" ten years earlier.

[monafam]

I definitely need to listen to more Raff.  I have heard quite a few of his works...the comparison to Dvorak (one of my favorites) has got me very intrigued on Raff's later works.

[JimL]

To drag in the kitchen sink, there is much in Rufinatscha's 6th that foreshadows Dvorak, particularly the scherzo.  And Dvorak never heard a note of it (save possibly in the two-piano arrangement!)

[Alan Howe]

I somehow doubt whether Dvorak heard any Rufinatscha. In any case the 6th was never performed in Rufinatscha's lifetime.
Let's get back to Raff: he was probably the most prominent symphonist in the mid-1870s, with his symphonies being widely available in published form. We know Tchaikovsky admired him - even developing some of his themes - but it'd be interesting to know exactly what Dvorak's opinion was. Does anyone possess a good biography of Dvorak?

[JimL]

It's a certainty that the two knew one another's music.  I'd venture a guess that Raff probably didn't think much of Dvorak's music, inasmuch as Dvorak was a 'nationalist' composer whereas Raff was a 'cosmopolitan' who made a rather disparaging comment to MacDowell about nationalism in music.

P.S. Rufinatscha's 6th Symphony was published in a two-piano (or piano 4-hand score) and was available to the general public in that form.  Eric Schissel has made a link to it in another thread somewhere around here.  Told you it was the kitchen sink.

[Mark Thomas]

Picking up on Alan's point about Raff's later orchestral works prefiguring the likes of Dvorak and Tchaikovsky, this is particularly clear with the Russian, who had some admiration for Raff and whose own works often sound quite "Raffian". There is even a direct quote in the slow movement of his Fifth: the famous horn melody is a straight lift both in melodic outline and much of the orchestration from the corresponding movement in Raff's Tenth, which predates it by seven years - see here. Another example, not quite so obvious, links Raff's Im Walde with the Pathetique. Tchaikovsky's mature orchestral sound clearly owes a substantial debt to Raff.

I'm away from home at present and so can't straightaway do any Raff/Dvorak comparisons as intriguingly suggested by Alan, but given Raff's currency at the time that Dvorak was establishing himself, there's every reason to credit it. A few years ago, when visiting an exhibition I chanced on in Prague about Fibich, I came across a poster advertising on of his premieres in the first half of a concert which ended with Im Walde!

[Alan Howe]

Rufinatscha would only have been a name to Dvorak, of that one can be pretty sure. What I am interested in are passages in Raff 7/1 which have melodic material orchestrated so similarly to passages in, for example, Dvorak 8, that it is impossible not to think one has switched composers!

[Peter1953]

I've listened again to Raff's In den Alpen (1875), followed immediately by Dvorak's 8th (1889). I know exactly what Alan means. The resemblance in style in certain passages is unmistakable.

By the way, I've always suspected Brahms to have composed the 3rd movement for his fellow composer's 8th.

Could be an interesting topic: which composers clearly influenced other composers, who and in what way?

[Alan Howe]

Phew, thanks Peter! I was beginning to think it was just me...!!!