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Raff: Piano Four-Hands Sonatas / Wikman & Wikman
Sterling Records

Raff: Piano Four-Hands Sonatas / Wikman & Wikman

$20.99

Details

Composer
Joachim Raff
Artist
Solveig Wikman, Bertil Wikman
Format
CD
Label
Sterling Records
Released
Nov 04, 2022
Catalog #
CDA1850
UPC
7393338185024

About

It was common practice in the nineteenth century for major orchestral and chamber works to be made available in piano four-hand reductions, as concert and recital-going was still a novelty and many middle-class homes had a piano, and these editions made such large works accessible to a much wider piano-playing public. What was less common was that Raff prepared his own piano four-hand arrangements, as often this time-consuming task was farmed out by composers and publishers to separate arrangers. However, Raff was also a skilled arranger himself. In addition to the original works mentioned above, he wrote a further eight works for piano four-hands which were either early pieces based on the melodies of other composers or more straightforward arrangements and transcriptions of the works of others, made at the request of publishers.

The Piano Four-Hands Sonata in E minor Op. 73b was arranged from the Violin Sonata No. 1, probably early in 1854 shortly after Raff finished work on the Sonata itself, but was not published by Schuberth until 1867, eight years after the original work, which had become the most successful of his five violin sonatas. The second work in the series, the Piano Four-Hands Sonata in A major Op. 90b, is an arrangement of the String Quartet No. 2, and was probably made immediately after Raff finished the Quartet in May 1857. The Quartet was published in 1862, but the Sonata remained in manuscript during Raff’s lifetime although it appears that as late as August 1881 Schuberth was preparing to publish it, as the company acknowledged receipt of Raff’s corrections of the proof. Publication never took place however, possibly because his death in June the next year intervened, and so it was not until the composer’s bicentenary year that Edition Nordstern published a first edition in 2022.

Tracklist 8 tracks

  1. 1 I. Bewegt, mit elegischem Pathos 08:46
    Track
    1
    Title
    I. Bewegt, mit elegischem Pathos
    Duration
    08:46
    Composer
    Joachim Raff
    Performer
    Bertil Wikman, Solveig Wikman
  2. 2 II. Sehr rasch und fein 04:52
    Track
    2
    Title
    II. Sehr rasch und fein
    Duration
    04:52
    Composer
    Joachim Raff
    Performer
    Bertil Wikman, Solveig Wikman
  3. 3 III. Nicht zu langsam 08:35
    Track
    3
    Title
    III. Nicht zu langsam
    Duration
    08:35
    Composer
    Joachim Raff
    Performer
    Bertil Wikman, Solveig Wikman
  4. 4 IV. Bewegt, sehr bestimmt 08:11
    Track
    4
    Title
    IV. Bewegt, sehr bestimmt
    Duration
    08:11
    Composer
    Joachim Raff
    Performer
    Bertil Wikman, Solveig Wikman
  5. 5 I. Rasch, jedoch ruhig 14:01
    Track
    5
    Title
    I. Rasch, jedoch ruhig
    Duration
    14:01
    Composer
    Joachim Raff
    Performer
    Bertil Wikman, Solveig Wikman
  6. 6 II. Rondo. Rasch 07:51
    Track
    6
    Title
    II. Rondo. Rasch
    Duration
    07:51
    Composer
    Joachim Raff
    Performer
    Bertil Wikman, Solveig Wikman
  7. 7 III. Langsam, doch nicht schleppend 08:06
    Track
    7
    Title
    III. Langsam, doch nicht schleppend
    Duration
    08:06
    Composer
    Joachim Raff
    Performer
    Bertil Wikman, Solveig Wikman
  8. 8 IV. Rasch 08:41
    Track
    8
    Title
    IV. Rasch
    Duration
    08:41
    Composer
    Joachim Raff
    Performer
    Bertil Wikman, Solveig Wikman