Recording of Raff's Samson

[Alan Howe]

half a million Swiss francs

By my calculation, that's almost £450,000. Wow!

It's still a very fine achievement, Fred. You are rightly proud of the result.

[JanOscar]

When is this production launched digitally?

[Alan Howe]

No mention so far.

[JanOscar]

It seems that the marketing strategy is to avoid exposure at all costs.
A pity for this very interesting release...

[Alan Howe]

I'm sure it's not deliberate. It's just the problem of how to break into a tough and niche international market.

[Justin]

It's still a very fine achievement, Fred. You are rightly proud of the result.

For a partly crowd-funded premiere recording of a 3-hour grand opera with a wonderful chorus and orchestra, we should be grateful for it. Chances of this ever getting recorded let alone performed again are probably slim to none.

[adcsound]

Dear Friends,

The entire Schweizer Fonogramm catalogue is now available as a  24bit download (including Samson), cheaper than the CD version.
the zip file contains the high-resolution (24-bit) audio, the cover and the booklet.

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For Samson you have 2 options included in the download:
One with all indexes (like a CD), but with some player you may hear a little "click" from one track to another, and one without indexes, just 3 separate files for the 3 Cds.
Around 6 gigas.

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Sorry if it's not the right place for this post, but because some of you were waiting for the digital release, it's done.
I have to say that from an artistic point of view, 24 bit is another world to me... Every time I have to produce CDs format I degrade my work (from 24 to 16 bit).
So, good news!

Salutations bernoises,

Fred.

[Alan Howe]

Thank you, Fred. And thanks again for your company's hard work on this important project.

[Alan Howe]

CDs are now available from Amazon (UK):
https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=raff+samson&i=popular&crid=28MPLCX5VO74B&sprefix=raff+samson%2Cpopular%2C63&ref=nb_sb_noss

[Mark Thomas]

A positive (but rather discursive) review by Ralph Locke, following on from his recent enthusiastic review of Die Eifersüchtigen.

[Alan Howe]

Yes, discursive is the word. I would like the review to have talked far more about the vocal writing and the difficulty, only partly solved here, of finding suitable singers for such a project today. Still, it does a fair job of putting Samson in historical context - although doesn't Samson et Dalila date from twenty years later rather than merely a decade?

[Mark Thomas]

Quite right. Exactly twenty years in fact: Raff finished his opera in 1857 and Saint-Saëns his in 1877.

[Alan Howe]

A simple fact that a review badly needs to get right. Drives me mad!

[eschiss1]

Besides Raff and Saint-Saëns - specifically in the Romantic period (so ignoring Händel), I see mostly Lefebvre's "Dalila" (1880s?) for orchestra after Octave Feuillet by way of works inspired by the Samson legend, but I've probably missed things... (oh, also Rubin Goldmark's symphonic poem and one or two others, never mind...)

[John Boyer]

Ralph Locke's review must have appeared in American Record Guide fairly recently because it's not in the cumulative index through 2024 and it's not in the current Sep/Oct 2025 issue.

Addendum: By the way, despite the heading, Mr. Locke gets the dates right in the body of the article for both Raff (1857) and Saint-Saens (1877),