This charming salon piece exemplifies Raff’s late-Romantic lyricism and focus on warm, harmonic landscapes. It is distinctive for its sweeping melodic arc and sentimental character.
Develop a singing tone to carry the long, arching melody line effectively.
Au soir (Op.163) is rated Henle level 4 of 9 — intermediate repertoire, roughly ABRSM grades 5–6. In the RCM system it corresponds to about level 6.
You should be comfortable at Henle level 4 — meaning you can already play level 3–4 pieces cleanly. Learning it one level early is possible as a stretch piece, but more than that usually leads to months of frustration.
A typical performance of Au soir (Op.163) lasts about 3 minutes.
Au soir (Op.163) is available as free public-domain sheet music on IMSLP — the score is linked directly from this page.