Raphaela Gromes - Offenbach (2019) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

Only few cellists are as inspiring as Raphaela Gromes: her cello playing is virtuosic and vibrant, full of passion and technically brilliant, versatile and charming at the same time. She fascinates her audience as soloist as well as duo-partner or member of a wind-quartet, her performance being fantastically challenging and extraordinarily light-footed.

She captivates her audience with her delightful play: “With the first sound she creates incredible intimacy, her performance being very private, not one note being just “made””, this is how the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” describes her appearance with the Münchner Symphoniker in 2018. “With a slightly hoarse tune she interprets music, senses it. (…) Gromes inspires with her bliss, pairs earthiness with feathery excursions. In her first cadenza she experiments with interesting dissonant intervals, discards them only to present stupendous virtuosity to return to tonal exegesis and again and again creates moments of pure poetry.”

Raphaela Gromes’ appearances with her duo partner at the piano, Julian Riem, are being celebrated as perfect duets. “In fact, they find a new, own way of interpreting instrumental duets: Gromes’ and Riem’s chamber music is symbiotic”, “Die Presse” enthuses after their performance in the Vienna Konzerthaus. Alongside her permanent duo-partner Julian Riem, Christian Altenburger, Isabelle von Keulen, Alexander Lubimov, Patrick Demenga and Mischa Maisky are Gromes’ partners for chamber music.

After her first recording for Faro Classics in 2016, she released her highly praised first album as SONY Classical exclusive artist in fall 2017. Accompanied on the piano by Julian Riem, „Serenata Italiana” she interprets works of the late Romantic composers Giuseppe Martucci, Leone Sinigaglia, Ferrucio B. Busoni and Mario Castelnuovo. An album that offers “caressing tone and yet at the same time makes you listen attentively” as KulturSPIEGEL rhapsodizes. She presents the pieces with “cheerful naturalness”, shows “effortless expertise, so you just forget about the technical difficulties” reaching [with Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s “Figaro”-aria] “the perfect, acrobatic conclusion.”

Her second album „Hommage à Rossini“ for SONY was released in November 2018 and entered the classical charts on number 9. Raphaela Gromes acts internationally as SOS Children’s Villages Ambassador.

Tracklist:
1. Danse bohémienne, Op. 28 (09:05)
2. Deux âmes au ciel, Op. 25 (05:24)
3. Introduction et valse mélancolique, Op. 14 (04:29)
4. Rêverie au bord de la mer, WoO (04:24)
5. La course en traîneau, WoO (03:47)
6. Duo for Two Cellos in E Major, Op. 54, No. 3: I. Adagio - Allegro maestoso (11:41)
7. Duo for Two Cellos in E Major, Op. 54, No. 3: II. Allegro vivo (07:17)
8. Les larmes de Jacqueline, Élégie, Op. 76, No. 2 (05:46)
9. Tarantelle, WoO (06:00)
10. Les contes d'Hoffmann: Barcarolle (Arr. for 2 Cellos and Piano) (03:26)

Personnel:
Raphaela Gromes (cello)
Julian Riem (piano)
WDR Funkhausorchester, Enrico Delamboye