Joachim Raff - Italian Suite (1871)

Joachim Raff

 

(May 27, 1822 – June 24 or June 25, 1882)

was a German-Swiss composer, teacher and pianist

 Italian Suite (1871/49세)  

I. Overture - 00:00
II. Barcarole - 7:22
III. Intermezzo - 14:01
IV. Notturno - 18:57
V. Tarantelle - 25:15

The Italienische Suite ( Italian Suite) for large orchestra in e minor WoO.35 is an extensive work, lasting

over half an hour. It is also one of Raff's sunniest large-scale compositions, melding his usual grateful melodies with seductive and sumptuous orchestral textures. Like Tchaikovsky and Elgar, Raff was inspired to write a work celebrating Italy by his first visit there and this portrait of the country is an eclectic mix of dance, mood pictures and character study, with a rousing general introduction setting the mood for what follows.

Raff was a major force in reintroducing the suite as a musical form and he wrote four of them for orchestra, all in five movements. Whilst the Suite No.1 was an abstract work, the other three comprise what have been called "Raff's travelogues". As well as the Italian, there are the Hungarian Suite (designated No.2, but the third to be written and a very popular work in Raff's day) and the final From Thüringia.

His daughter Helene, explained the work's background in her biography of Raff: "The Italian Suite (in e minor, originally "From the South") was the artistic fruit of the first, even if short, thoroughly enjoyable Italian trip that Raff could allow himself. However, he locked the work in his desk, since he intended another revision". It was finished in Autumn 1871, but went unpublished and unperformed during his lifetime. Presumably Raff's continued withholding of the work until death intervened, meant that he never did get around to revising it - it was eventually premiered in Berlin under Franz Wüllner's baton on 26 November 1883 and published the next year by Ries & Erler.

The opening Overture is a rousing, if rather German, start but it is followed by a suitably languid Barcarole, a gentle Intermezzo and a highly melodic and generally contemplative Nottorno which Raff reused six years later as an intermezzo in his opera "Benedetto Marcello". The work ends with a rumbustious Tarantelle into which Raff nonetheless manages to weave extensive use of counterpoint.