Raff String quartet no 3

 Day 92

Raff String quartet no 3 in e minor

After a series of British symphonies it is time to explore a different repertory so I will spend the next few days of this project looking at the string quartet repertory. Also, given that I have spend a lot of time with French and Russian music recently as well, I’ll look at pieces in the Austro-German tradition.

Raff is one of those composers who gets a mention now and then for his programmatic symphonies and also because of his assistance with the orchestration of some of Liszt’s symphonic poems, though the extent of that ‘assistance’ is open to debate. He was quite highly regarded in his day (1822-1882) but the only piece of his that retains any place in the repertory is his Cavatina, which occasionally gets played as an encore piece in violin recitals.  I have a vague memory that I did listen to one of the symphonies years ago but nothing has stuck in my memory.

This quartet, the third of 8, dates from 1866. I found it a curiously uneven work. The first movement was a well mannered piece typical of a Leipzig schooled disciple of Mendelssohn or Schumann - the melodic material was attractive but I got the sense that Raff didn’t really have much of a sense of how to develop that material and the piece rather meandered along. The second, scherzo-like, movement was much more interesting - it started out as pure Mendelssohn but developed into quite unexpected harmonic areas and had some interesting textures which pointed to much later music. The third was a complete mystery. It is a theme and variations on a very simple theme. The variations themselves were rather like the simple variations which you find in the early Mozart piano music - each variation has a single idea which persists throughout. It all seemed very stiff and must have seen old-fashioned even at the time it was written - though the coda was rather lovely. The last movement had some attractive ideas but again I didn’t get a sense that Raff quite knew where he was going with the music and the incessant dotted rhythms rather began to pall. It ended quite perfunctorily.

Raff has his supporters and there were certainly glimpses here of a strong musical personality - particularly in the second movement - but I rarely felt totally engaged by this music or got a sense that Raff is an unjustly neglected master. Perhaps the evidence of one piece is not enough to make that sort of judgement but in this case I don’t think musical history has got Raff wrong.