Joachim Raff: Overture til Prometheus Unbound & Bernhard von Weimar

The four works on this CD present an interesting picture of Joachim Raff at opposite ends of his career. Three of the works come from the formative period when Raff was Franz Liszt's personal secretary and factotum, and include a composition written by Liszt that Raff arranged and orchestrated for its initial performance. Two of the these were written in 1854, by which time Raff, then thirty-two years old, had long been an important member of the New German School, Liszt's closely-knit community based in Weimar.