It's all about the classical music composers and their works from the last 400 years and much more about music. Hier erfahren Sie alles über die klassischen Komponisten und ihre Meisterwerke der letzten vierhundert Jahre und vieles mehr über Klassische Musik.
Popular Posts
-
by Emily F. Hogstad, Interlude It’s not easy to be a composer, and many have had dramatic lives full of pain and struggle. But some compos...
-
by Janet Horvath , Interlude When audiences are transported by a concert, they imagine that a kind of magic happens onstage attributed to th...
-
William Busch Chamber Music by Maureen Buja March 10th, 2025 The British composer William Busch (1901–1945) studied music internation...
-
International performer Michael Bublé together with the Megastar deliver a breathtaking rendition of Frank Sinatra’s timeless pop song ‘The ...
-
Edward Elgar was born on June 2, 1857 in Broadheath nearby Worcester/ Great Britain . Elgar, a son of a musician trader and store...
-
182,711 views Feb 22, 2025 #WendyKokkelkoren #Goosebumps #Ballads 00:00 - 05:00 Hallelujah 05:01 - 09:38 I Will Always Love You 09...
-
Claude Debussy "Claire de Lune" bei den BBC Proms gespielt von der gefeierten georgische Pianistin Khatia Buniatishvili. Das ganze...
-
by Janet Horvath November 5th, 2022 Did you know that years of music training can dramatically shape our brains? Those of us who spend m...
-
by Georg Predota Maurice Ravel 150 years ago, on 7 March 1875, the small village of Ciboure in the Basque region of France saw the birth of...
-
We proudly celebrate Koro Krusyendo of the Holy Cross of Davao College for achieving 3rd place in the Folklore Category of the Himig Hando...
Wednesday, September 14, 2022
Erroll Garner plays Misty
Beegie Adair Trio - Autumn Leaves
Beegie Adair Trio - Autumn Leaves
The Coming Joy: Raff’s Ode au Printemps
by Maureen Buja

Joachim Raff
Considered during his lifetime the premier symphonist of the day, Joachim Raff (1822-1882) has now virtually vanished from our concert stages. He was encouraged by Mendelssohn and his scores, sent to his publisher by Mendelssohn, got the approval of Robert Schumann in his reviews in his music journal.
Liszt was an admirer and asked Raff to join him in Weimar, where from 1850 to 1856, Raff was part of the Liszt household. Eventually, Raff tired of Liszt’s overbearing personality, but while he was in Weimar, was able to create his own musical voice, poised somewhere between the conservatism of the Mendelssohn / Schumann camp and the revolution of the Liszt / Wagner camp.
Entirely self-taught, his breakthrough came in 1863 when both his First Symphony and a cantata won prizes that brought him to the attention of the concert-going world. He became the founding director of the Hoch Academy in Frankfurt in 1877. The Hoch Academy was important not only for employing Clara SchumannTra but also for holding special music classes just for women. As a composer, he wasn’t merely a symphonist but also wrote operas, choral pieces, chamber music, songs, and, above all, works for the piano.

Tra Nguyen
His 1857 work Ode to Spring, is described as a ‘morceau de concert.’ He wrote it in Wiesbaden, six months after having left the Liszt household in Weimar. He now had musical independence and a fiancée, Doris Genast. The work is dedicated to Betty Schott, the wife of Wagner’s publisher, and she performed it in 1860 under its first title: Frühlingshymne (‘Spring Hymn’), described as a Caprice symphonique. Schott published it in 1862 as Ode au Printemps.
It’s not an ode to Spring having arrived, it’s an ode to the coming of Spring. The opening Largetto is atmospheric before the piano joins with a long cantabile melody. The piano is then joined by a solo cello and then the full orchestra. It is in the Presto section that Spring arrives with its exuberance and energy. A brass fanfare announces the true arrival of the season. The end of the work is calmer, sunlit, and closes with a flourish.