March program highlights
Joachim Raff Fine Music, in March, has its fair share of the esoteric. With program subtitles like ‘Once famous, now faded’ and ‘Dead alas, too soon’, Sunday Special sets its stall out with admirable clarity. Meanwhile in ‘Live and Local’ we continue to follow the work of our Fine Music Kruger Scholars, with a broadcast of the concert saxophonist Nick Russoniello gave at the 2015 Bowral Autumn Music Festival, and another chance to hear recorder-player Alicia Crossley’s Duality program.
SUNDAY SPECIAL
20 March, 27 March JS Bach was less famous in his day than Telemann. Beethoven repeatedly named Cherubini as his most esteemed contemporary. Musical history is replete with such retrospective absurdities. And the list of composers even less well known than Cherubini and Telemann, who were celebrated in their day but since all but forgotten, is of considerable length. Sunday Special, titled ‘Once famous, now faded’, looks at one of the more obscure composers to answer to that description: Joachim Raff. Raff’s 72 years roughly spanned the 19th century. A German of Swiss birth, he was a largely self-taught musician, and from the outset pursued composition, rather than performing, as a career. He must have had considerable self-belief, because he sent some of his piano compositions to Felix Mendelssohn who was impressed and recommended them to his publisher. That began a career that saw Raff become one of the most celebrated composers of
his time, as well as teacher and inspiration to many we remember today far better than him. Robert Schumann reviewed him favourably and the conductor Hans von Bulow befriended him. As the first director of the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt he employed Clara Schumann to teach, creating a class specifically for women composers. Composers he personally taught included Alexander Ritter and Edward MacDowell, who edited the Romeo and Juliet overture that starts our program. His vast output included eleven symphonies, which are a sumptuous blend of classical and baroque influences, yet adorned with descriptive titles which advertise their Romantic programmatic structure. In this Sunday Special you will hear the third of those symphonies, titled In the Forest. It’s a chance to listen to the music that was held in such esteem by so many luminaries, and to ponder why posterity has treated it so harshly. The Sunday Special, entitled ‘Dead, alas, too soon’, tells a story all too familiar to lovers of music – that of the shining musical talent, cut off in, or before its prime. Schubert, Mozart, Pergolesi spring to mind, but not many, at least since the days of the plague, have died as young as Guillaume Lekeu, who caught typhoid fever from a dodgy sorbet and died in 1894 the day after his 24th birthday.
Nick Russoniello
As the archetype of the brilliant talent cut short, Lekeu was the real deal. He was of Belgian birth, and his first studies in piano and theory took place in provincial Belgium. He composed his first piece at the age of 15, and at 18 moved with his parents to Paris, where prominent among the many influences that directed his development was that of Cesar Franck, under whom Lekeu studied counterpoint and fugue. He was beginning, at the tender age of 18, to move in exalted circles that included Vincent d’Indy, who taught him orchestration and encouraged him to enter the Prix de Rome. Aged 21, he managed second prize with his cantata Andromede, and he was honoured by Eugene Ysaye with a commission, the Violin Sonata in D Minor which forms the centrepiece of the program, and is the work for which he is best remembered.
Live and Local
Thursdays, 8pm ‘Live and Local’ in March features several names that are dear to Fine Music listeners. Nick Russoniello and Alicia Crossley are winners, respectively, of the 2014 and 2015 Fine Music-Kruger Scholarships. Each has shown a commitment to expanding the repertoire for their instrument, and Fine Music’s sound technicians have been dogging their footsteps, recording performances in and around Sydney as their careers progress. ‘Live and Local’ on 10 March brings a recording from last year’s Bowral Autumn Music Festival, in which Nick performs his own composition, The New South. He shares the program with Fine Music Artist-in-residence The Acacia Quartet, who demonstrate their versatility with works from Kreisler, Dvorak and Mozart. Recorder-player Alicia Crossley was our 2015 Fine Music Kruger Scholar, and had a busy year of it, putting her scholarship to the best possible use. Among the highlights was her collaboration with American harpist Emily Granger, culminating in their Duality program which forms part 2 of ‘Live and Local’ on 17 March. The program mixes old and new with contributions from Faure and Debussy and a couple of startling pieces commissioned from friends of the duo.
- Tom Forrester-Paton March 2016
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