Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, Robin de Raaff
Release Date: 25 August 2023
Label: Challenge Classics
Packaging Type: Slip Sleeve (CD or Vinyl)
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 0608917294224
Genres: Classical
Description
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.
Imagery is also initially transformed into sound in the three works on this CD. 'Circulus', De Raaff's second piano concerto, deals with the circularity of time. In his 'Orphic Descent', an Orpheus-like figure descends, never to climb back, because it is Euridice - or whoever she is -who does this; high, low, to, fro, light, depth, pattern and chaos, movement. And the Second Violin Concerto (2019) focuses on a dazzling, moving light, a play of light and water.
Tracklisting
Narratio Quartet
Piano Duo Scholtes & Janssens
Matteo Cicchitti, Musica Elegentia
Cappella Pratensis, Stratton Bull, Sollazzo Ensemble
La Sfera Armoniosa, Oscar Verhaar, Mike Fentross
Simona Marchesi, Bartolomeo Dandolo Marchesi
Ben Kim, Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra
Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, Jan Willem de Vriend
Ensemble La Francais
Kenneth Hamilton
Christoph Croise; Andrey Baranov; Alexander Panfilov
Trio Parnassus
Katharina Kammerloher (mezzo-soprano), Arttu Kataja (baritone), Eric Schneider (piano)
BachWerkVokal, Gordon Safari
Ostrava New Orchestra, Owen Underhill, Ostravska Banda, Petr Kotik, Elision Ensemble, Arditti Quartet, Switch~ Ensemble, Jason Thorpe Buchanan
Kilian Herold, Barbara Buntrock, Florian Donderer, Tanja Tetzlaff
