I wonder how many will be celebrating the once highly regarded, now largely (and unfairly!) forgotten Joachim Raff on Friday, the two hundredth anniversary of his birth? I’ve been hosting ‘Record Evenings’ in Bulawayo for close on 45 years (we’re up to 834 and they started before CDs so we still call them that!) and devoted the most recent to Raff, including his First Cello Concerto, Piano Concerto and Second Symphony. The music was unknown to all who were there, even the composer’s name to several, and everyone thoroughly enjoyed it.
Why do we never hear Raff other than on record, and even that not so often? – the piano concerto still hasn’t featured in Hyperion’s wonderful Romantic Piano Concerto series, now up to 84. Is there a live performance of it anywhere this year, I wonder? It’s a splendid work that I first got to know fifty years ago via the Genesis recording with Frank Cooper and of which I have never tired – I'm sure that it would bring the house down if anyone had the courage to programme it.
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