SAMSON (1858) - "the Swiss Lohengrin"

Music drama in 5 acts by Joachim Raff (1822-1882)
World premiere recording, Edition Nordstern
Label Schweizer Fonogramm
3-CD box with booklet and libretto in D, E and F

For over 170 years, SAMSON, the five-act opera by the Romantic composer Joachim Raff, born in Lachen, Switzerland in 1822, remained lost in a drawer without a premiere. Completed in 1858, the composition was still under the strong impression of Wagner's Lohengrin, at the premiere of which Raff had assisted his patron Franz Liszt in Weimar in 1850. In the critical essay "The Wagner Question" (1854), Raff refined his stance on the burning questions of opera development at the time and differentiated his own position between the New German School around Liszt and the traditionalists in the Beethoven line. He wrote the libretto about the biblical hero Samson himself, drawing on his historical and archaeological studies. He took his cue from Wagner's new orchestral colors and also integrated aspects of French grand opéra, for example in the overall form or in the ballet scenes of the last act. Weighty choral scenes, psychological fine-tuning in the relationships between the main characters, an impressive sense of dramaturgical development - all this makes Raff's SAMSON a trouvaille, indeed a real sensation, not only for the Swiss music and opera history of the 19th century. Following the world premiere of the work in Weimar in the Raff year 2022, the Swiss premiere took place in Bern in September 2023 after more than 170 years, as the crowning finale after this studio recording with international singers, the Bühnen Bern choir and the Bern Symphony Orchestra conducted by Philippe Bach as a co-production with Edition Nordstern, the Joachim Raff Society, Radio SRF2 Kultur, Bühnen Bern and the Schweizer Fonogramm label.