So: the 'Swiss Lohengrin' is here! And a most welcome arrival on the operatic scene it is too. Samson was completed in 1857, some seven years after Wagner's Lohengrin (1850); other important operas written in roughly the same period include those of Verdi's early maturity (Rigoletto, Il Trovatore and La Traviata) and his grand opera The Sicilian Vespers (1855), Meyerbeer's Le Prophète (1849), Schumann's Genoveva (1850) and Berlioz's Les Troyens (1856-8); Gounod's Faust (1859) lay two years in the future. Raff's opera, however, was never staged in the composer's lifetime.
How, then, does Samson stack up? In a word: extremely well. It's simply amazing that music of such quality should have remained unperformed and unrecorded for so long. In common with Wagner's operas up to this point, Samson would surely have seemed very modern: although it has some of the trappings of Grand Opera, it sacrifices mere crowd-pleasing to the dictates of music drama just as seriously conceived as Lohengrin. This is no Meyerbeerian spectacle; neither, however, is it a mere imitation of Wagner, although Raff does employ musical motifs - such as, for example, Samson's triumphant fanfare. In terms of structure, Raff is actually more consistent than Wagner in creating a continuous musical narrative. A CD of highlights might be tricky to devise!
As in so much of his compositional oeuvre Raff is the consummate synthesizer of musical opposites – in this case, Grand Opera and Wagnerian music drama. The result is something typically Raff, albeit in a synthesis he was soon to abandon altogether.
The performance does this fine work proud. Philippe Bach conducts the Bern Symphony Orchestra with a sure sense of the need in Raff for taut rhythms and clarity of expression. The cast is good, although not of the very highest class, I think. The best singing comes from the powerful, gleaming soprano of Olena Tokar as Delilah and the firm bass-baritone of Christian Immler as the High Priest. As Samson, Magnus Vigilius is better in lyrical passages than in the strenuous sections where his tenor is sometimes sorely taxed, but he certainly doesn't let the side down. The best of him is probably to be heard in his ardent singing in Act 2 scene 2. The chorus give an excellent account of themselves (and they have a lot to do!)
I don't imagine that this release will ever have a commercial competitor. It is the reference recording that Samson so urgently needed – and deserved.
Prosit Raff! Prosit Schweizer Fonogramm!
How, then, does Samson stack up? In a word: extremely well. It's simply amazing that music of such quality should have remained unperformed and unrecorded for so long. In common with Wagner's operas up to this point, Samson would surely have seemed very modern: although it has some of the trappings of Grand Opera, it sacrifices mere crowd-pleasing to the dictates of music drama just as seriously conceived as Lohengrin. This is no Meyerbeerian spectacle; neither, however, is it a mere imitation of Wagner, although Raff does employ musical motifs - such as, for example, Samson's triumphant fanfare. In terms of structure, Raff is actually more consistent than Wagner in creating a continuous musical narrative. A CD of highlights might be tricky to devise!
As in so much of his compositional oeuvre Raff is the consummate synthesizer of musical opposites – in this case, Grand Opera and Wagnerian music drama. The result is something typically Raff, albeit in a synthesis he was soon to abandon altogether.
The performance does this fine work proud. Philippe Bach conducts the Bern Symphony Orchestra with a sure sense of the need in Raff for taut rhythms and clarity of expression. The cast is good, although not of the very highest class, I think. The best singing comes from the powerful, gleaming soprano of Olena Tokar as Delilah and the firm bass-baritone of Christian Immler as the High Priest. As Samson, Magnus Vigilius is better in lyrical passages than in the strenuous sections where his tenor is sometimes sorely taxed, but he certainly doesn't let the side down. The best of him is probably to be heard in his ardent singing in Act 2 scene 2. The chorus give an excellent account of themselves (and they have a lot to do!)
I don't imagine that this release will ever have a commercial competitor. It is the reference recording that Samson so urgently needed – and deserved.
Prosit Raff! Prosit Schweizer Fonogramm!
