Raaff

This cello concerto is a miracle, both for the listener and for the soloist. The listener is swept along through unexplored terrain. The instrumentation stands out - even for a master like Robin. For a cello, Robin's concerto is innovative and challenging from a technical point of view. The premiere with Yannick and the orchestra was like a celebration - you can hear it. New work only reveals its secrets after a lot of listening, so it is fantastic that this recording is being made. In the summer of 2007, Robin de Raaff wrote Entangled Tales for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Entangled Tales is built up of several layers. It is a continual variation of small elements: rhythms, brief melodies, and ever-changing sounds in the rich palette of a large symphony orchestra. He does not hesitate to use an opulent instrumentation in impressionist and expressionist sphere. For the occasion of its 125th anniversary in 2015, the Het Gelders Orkest asked Robin de Raaff to write a special composition. The result is a symphony of three movements on the concepts of light and dark, referred to as illumination and eclipse. These words do not point to a state of being, but to motion. It is not just about states - light and dark - but also about motion: illumination and eclipse.

How is it that music that is so precise and obviously well organised can at the same time move with unforced, almost improvisational fluidity? And how can it be that atonal music sounds so natural and accessible? It's because De Raaff's music is nature itself; geometrically and architecturally stylised music it may be, but no different to the way a tree puts out its branches or how a leaf forms its veins. No different to the cosmologic nature of constellations, wave patterns on water, the pictorial architecture of a murmuration of starlings or a shoal of fish. In De Raaff's work calculation and spontaneity merge into a single, monumental but never massive whole.

The Dutch National Opera presents this World Premiere Recording of the opera 'Waiting for Miss Monroe' by leading Dutch composer Robin de Raaff. Star soprano Laura Aikin performs as the main protagonist in the role of Marylin Monroe, backed by the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Steven Sloane.

The very word concerto naturally calls up automatic associations with the Classic and Romantic musical traditions. If, however, there is one composition that does not fit this classical template, it is de Raaff’s Violin Concerto. This is even less true for Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto (1935); Berg, like de Raaff, employed the fruits of this tradition in a highly unusual and individual way.

Since its formation in 1969, the Raschèr Saxophone Quartet has appeared regularly at the major concert halls in Europe, Asia and the U.S.: Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center New York, Kennedy Center Washington D.C., Opera Bastille Paris, Royal Festival Hall London, Philharmonie Cologne, Finlandia Hall Helsinki, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Schauspielhaus Berlin, Musikverein Vienna, Tonhalle Zürich, Parco della Musica Rome, Dewan Filharmonik Petronas Kuala Lumpur, National Concert Hall Taipei, etc. The Vienna “Zeitung” hailed the quartet as the “Uncrowned Kings of the Saxophone” and a critic from “Die Welt” claimed, “If there were an Olympic discipline for virtuoso wind playing, the Raschèr Quartet would definitely receive a gold medal.”