Spirit Suites

The Jamaican Spirit comes through loud and clear in this song.

Piano Suite No. 4 by Joachim Raff. Performed by Andrea Carnevali. I. Fantasia – 00:00 II. Giga con Variazioni – 13:33 III. Cavatina – 26:13 IV. Marcia – 34:58 Although generally regarded for most of his career as a progressive musician, Raff was also a pioneer in the rediscovery of the old baroque musical forms such as the fugue, gigue and the canon. He used them frequently in his own compositions, often grouping them into suites of which he wrote no less than 17 for various instrumental forces. Indeed, along with Franz Lachner, Raff can be credited with the reintroduction of the suite as a musical form. Raff’s suites, in whatever medium, are generally unlike the random collections of lightweight pieces which later gave the genre a bad name. A typical Raff suite not only comprises, in the spirit of its baroque heritage, five or six gigues, gavottes, fugues and marches but they are usually substantial movements and the baroque form is no archaic throwback but rather Raff’s modern interpretation of the old form, suffused with romantic melody and harmonies. Raff wrote seven suites for solo piano but never numbered them. The D minor op.91 is chronologically the fourth, being written in Wiesbaden in 1859 during a very happy and productive time for Raff (he married in the same year).The work was published in 1862 and is dedicated to Liszt’s daughter Cosima, then married to Raff’s great friend Hans von Bülow whom she later left for Wagner. With the G minor Suite which follows it …

François FrancÅ“ur (1698 – 1787) “Suite de simphonies pour le festin royal de Monseigneur le Comte d’Artois” [Music for the Wedding of the Count d'Artois] (1773) – Suite in G minor: VII. Contredanse La Simphonie du Marais, Hugo Reyne. * Painting: “La Toilette”, François Boucher, 1730 (Huile sur toile – Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Lugano). ** Superintendent of Music for the Kings Chamber and a noted violinist, François FrancÅ“ur was one of the most high-profile French musicians of the XVIIIth century. Louis XV and his Court pampered this attractive virtuoso who devised the finest, most festive music for the Kings celebrations. In 1773, for the wedding of the Count of Artois, the future Charles X, with Marie-Thérèse of Savoy, he performed his Simphonies which contributed to the “great disorder” (ie feverish atmosphere) noted in his diary by the “Intendant des Menus Plaisirs”, in charge of the festivities. FrancÅ“urs suites “à la française”, by their modernity, paint a fascinating wordless portrait of a period in which revolution seems unthinkable, but in which the French spirit shows itself ready for profound transformation.