By the time Joachim Raff began composing works for solo instruments and orchestra, he had been in Franz Liszt’s inner circle for several years as a full participant in the Weimar avant-garde. Having been intimately involved in the creation and orchestration of the earliest versions of at least two of Liszt’s three formally-named piano concerti, it is not surprising therefore, that Raff’s own first concerto followed, in a general sort of way, Liszt’s model of interconnected, thematically related movements.