Frankfurt ⋅ The disappointment of some visitors must have been great. Some had even traveled from far away to hear this one special symphony: on the 200th birthday of the Frankfurt composer Joachim Raff, the first director of Dr. Hoch’s Conservatory, should his Symphony No. 3 in F major op. 153 (“Im Walde”) be heard in the Alte Oper, played by the Frankfurt Opera and Museum Orchestra in the traditional series of the Museums-Gesellschaft in the Alte Oper. But just three hours before the start of Sunday’s eleven o’clock matinee, guest conductor Dennis Russell Davies had to cancel. He had tested positive for the corona virus.
Of course, a replacement could not be found so quickly, especially since a work that really did not belong to the repertoire was to be played. There was no matinee, crowds of listeners had to go home. The conductor Takeshi Moriuchi, the excellent study director of the Oper Frankfurt, now at least saved the rehearsal evening. But even he could not take over the unknown Raff symphony without rehearsing. Instead, the hard-working Japanese gave samples from two operas that he is currently conducting in Frankfurt. Under his direction, the prelude to Wagner’s “Meistersinger” and Humperdinck’s “Hansel and Gretel” sounded extremely transparent in the polyphony, radiant in the colors, confident and so that the musical relationship of the two overtures jumped straight to the ear.