Believe it or not, this is not the first but the second digital recording of Joseph Joachim Raff's consciously conservative Symphony No. 2 in C major. Back in 1993 at the peak of the digital boom, Marco Polo, the label dedicated to exploring the obscure and unknown, released a recording of
Urs Peter Schneider leading the
Slovak State Philharmonic in a professional but pedestrian performance that seemed fully commensurate with the Second's mediocre merits. Some fans of the almost forgotten Swiss composer continued to hope that a more dedicated performance would reveal hitherto unsuspected merits to the work, but, as this 2002 recording with
Hans Stadlmair leading the
Bamberg Symphony on the Tudor label proves, even a more dedicated performance cannot do much to improve on the deeply mediocre. With its thematic gestures swiped from Schumann's Second, its formal structures borrowed from Beethoven's Fourth, and its development sections lifted from Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique, Raff's Second seems deliberately second-hand even in
Stadlmair and the
Bamberg's energetic and enthusiastic performance. In Raff's less ambitious suite for orchestra called Aus Thüringen,
Stadlmair's ardent advocacy and the
Bamberg's warmhearted playing do make the work's Mendelssohn swipes sound at least momentarily charming if still ultimately unmemorable. Tudor's sound is a bit recessed, but clear enough.