Musicologist and director of the Joachim Raff Archive, Severin Kolb, and Stefan Kägi have published a new edition of Joachim Raff’s Six Morceaux, Op. 85, with Breitkopf & Härtel.
“With the Six Morceaux, Raff created a collection of six short pieces with which he wanted to “entertain many listeners” and show that he was also capable of writing “light” music. In previous years, he had made a name for himself with extremely demanding chamber music for renowned dedicatees. The Six Morceaux, dedicated to violinist Ludwig Straus, are likely to be related to Raff’s teaching activities at a private piano school in Wiesbaden at the time. They are therefore well suited for violin lessons, with the individual pieces based on different levels of difficulty without losing any of their musical sophistication. The best-known piece is certainly the “Cavatina”, which was arranged for various ensembles during Raff’s lifetime and remains one of the most popular encore pieces to this day – Fritz Kreisler, Yehudi Menuhin, and Itzhak Perlman have all recorded it. A piano quintet version is even said to have been heard on the Titanic. This modern Urtext edition is based on the first edition, which was accompanied and initiated by Raff himself.”