Joachim Raff - Complete Works for Cello & Piano (Christoph Croisé; Oxana Shevchenko)

Information

Composer: Joachim Raff

• Duo for Piano and Cello, Op. 59
• 2 Fantasie-stücke for Cello and Piano, Op. 86
• 2 Romances, Op. 182
• Sonata for Piano and Cello in D Major, Op. 183

Christoph Croisé, cello

Oxana Shevchenko, piano

Date: 2022

Label: Avie Records

https://www.avie-records.com/releases/joachim-raff-complete-works-for-cello-piano/

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Review

Pity Joachim Raff. Pity any fine second-rank composer who had the misfortune to work within the orbit of Liszt, Brahms and the Schumanns – and, moreover, who happened to be prolific. ‘It can hardly be avoided that insignificant material also reaches the public’, wrote one contemporary critic, of Raff’s Cello Sonata, Op 183. ‘We would include in this category the aforementioned sonata.’

Ouch. I don’t think anyone who listened to this new recording by Christoph Croisé and Oxana Shevchenko would agree with that appraisal. Yes, the sonata’s style is closer to Mendelssohn than one might expect from a work premiered in 1873, but those Mendelssohnian qualities – lyricism, transparency and verve (just listen to that bravura opening) – are overlaid with a virtuosity (particularly in the piano-writing) and a largeness of spirit that admit the influence of Liszt without being overwhelmed by it. There’s a wonderfully vivid musical imagination at work here, and the Two Fantasy Pieces, as well as the sweeping Duo, Op 59 – a sonata by any other name – belong to the high-Romantic world of Schumann’s cello music.

Croisé and Shevchenko are wholly inside Raff’s world; Croisé’s focused, almost viola-like upper register is complemented by gloriously mellow G and C strings, and while Shevchenko supplies glittering waterfalls of tone at Raff’s more exultant climaxes, the two of them also have the measure of the more tender moments. Their phrasing ebbs and flows but never wallows, and they bring a touching Innigkeit to the Two Romances, Op 182 (originally written for horn). In all, it’s a thoroughly engaging 70 minutes of music-making, with the pair’s unforced eloquence giving them the edge over their closest rivals on disc, Joseph Mendoes and Taeyeon Lim (Toccata Classics).

-- Richard Bratby, Gramophone

More reviews:

https://www.thestrad.com/reviews/christoph-croise-raff/14546.article

https://www.allmusic.com/album/raff-complete-works-for-cello-piano-mw0003648334

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/music/raff-complete-works-for-cello-piano-not-quite-a-silk-purse-1.4778632

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Joachim Raff (May 27, 1822 – June 24 or June 25, 1882) was a German-Swiss composer, teacher and pianist. He worked as Liszt's assistant at Weimar from 1850 to 1853, helping in the orchestration of several of Liszt's works. From 1878 he was the first Director of, and a teacher at, the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, where he employed Clara Schumann and a number of other eminent musicians as teachers. His pupils there included Edward MacDowell and Alexander Ritter. Raff was very prolific, and by the end of his life was one of the best known German composers, though his work is largely forgotten today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joachim_Raff

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Christoph Croisé (born 3 December 1993 in Filderstadt, Germany) is a French-German-Swiss cellist and composer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christoph_Croisé

http://christophcroise.ch/en/

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Oxana Shevchenko was born in 30 May 1987 in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

https://www.oxanashevchenko.com/

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