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The recording and performance deliver a pretty impressive punch, conductor Gregor Meyer emphasising the dramatic vigour of the work. The baritone Andreas Wolf has a powerful and dynamic presence and soprano Marie Henriette Reinhold, with a much smaller part, is also excellent. Both are recorded a little forward of the choir but not excessively so and the chorus itself sings with gusto and finesse as the music demands. The purely orchestral passages come over very well, the fierier ones genuinely exciting, and the pace of the piece is absolutely spot on - Meyer doesn't hang around and that's what's almost always needed with Raff. I suppose I'm so familiar with the work from the old LP recording, a noble but flawed effort, and this is such a (literally) dramatic improvement, that at present I'm rather bowled over by it. In this performance it really does come over as the master work Raff hoped it would prove to be. 

Yes, I'd say so, but I've always quite liked that idiom.

A new CD featuring the estimable Oliver Triendl playing Rudolf Moser's Piano Concerto, coupled with various of Moser's orchestral works, is imminent from Hänssler - details and audio samples her. Moser is a new name to me but his idiom, although clearly 20th century, seems to be within UC's area of interest.

Oh, well done, Colin!

I tried to download it when this was first posted but, despite having a MediaFire account, I couldn't.

That's setting the bar a bit low, though, Alan.

I'd missed this. It's an attractive work, certainly, but an oddly unbalanced one if the whole piece is played in this performance. The first two movements are each a substantial 10 minutes long and then the final two appear to be played attacca and last no more than 6 minutes in total. 

Recordings of the broadcasts this week of the Symphony No.4 and Piano Concerto are now available in our Downloads Board here. The final movement of the Symphony wasn't broadcast (an odd decision) so I've added it from the poorer quality version of the same recording which is available on YouTube.

People, including members here, have tried to explain to me the commercial logic for performers or labels doing this and it still makes no sense. Paid-for streaming platforms, yes, but YouTube?

... and with that, let's focus on Raff and his oratorio, please.

I do very much like the site and the administrators

Thanks for the thumbs up on both counts, Maury. Much appreciated.

It doesn't look like it, as Heymann has bought it personally, not via Naxos. I imagine that he will get economies of scale by using Naxos' worldwide distribution arm for Chandos CDs but that doesn't mean that they'll be merged. It was only a matter of time before Chandos followed Hyperion and BIS, but I wasn't expecting it to remain a more-or-less independent label after the sale. Interesting.

Franck's Symphony dates from 1888 and Chausson's from 1890, so it's very likely that Becker, writing 17 years later, knew of them.

Becker's Symphony really is the business! Excellent material, tightly argued, great variety of mood within a very consistent and personal style and commendably compact. It appears to be Becker's only essay in the medium and yet is so masterful, surprisingly so given that his other large scale purely orchestral works only seem to amount to a Suite, a couple of violin concertos and a symphonic poem. It isn't innovative for its time except in the sense of melding together the New German and conservative traditions of the late 19th century and, to me, has an "end of an era", summing up feel to it, but there's plenty of vigour in the writing, maybe more than one would expect from a 65 year old nearing the end of his career. Plaudits to Reverie for persevering with completion of his superb realisation but the quality of this Symphony really does cry out for a full orchestral recording.

This is very thin stuff, I'm afraid. It's not downright bad, just devoid of any substance. That Prout didn't include it in his oeuvre and referred to "some rubbish perpetrated" says it all, I think.