Raphaela Gromes

Raphaela Gromes – Femmes (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:02:07 minutes | 2,12 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sony Classical

For many years, star cellist and OPUS KLASSIK award winner Raphaela Gromes has championed works by women composers. Three of her albums, which have been highly praised by the press and the public, have featured music by unknown female composers, and she has a long-standing collaboration with the “Frau und Musik” archive in Frankfurt.

So it is only logical that Raphaela Gromes gives a voice to outstanding women of music history from nine centuries with her new double album FEMMES. No less than 23 female composers are represented on the double album: from Hildegard von Bingen and Clara Schumann to Lera Auerbach and Billie Eilish, but also famous opera figures such as Mozart’s Susanna from “Le nozze di Figaro” or Bizet’s Carmen.
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Raphaela Gromes – Offenbach (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:01:22 minutes | 1,14 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sony Classical

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.

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Raphaela Gromes – Hommage à Rossini (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 55:39 minutes | 556 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sony Classical

Gioachino Rossini died 150 years ago. This leading light of Italian opera wrote one of the most frequently performed and most famous operas in the whole history of music: Il barbieredi Siviglia. Now the star violoncellist and exclusive SONY Classical artist Raphael Gromespays tribute to Rossini with her latest album. Her Hommageà Rossininaturally features UneLarme(A Tear), Rossini’s only original work for violoncello and piano, but it also includes a number of arrangements of Rossini arias for violoncello and orchestra or piano and a set of variations on a theme from Rossini’s Mosèin Egittowritten by the Czech composer BohuslavMartinů. But pride of place goes to a world-premiere recording of a piece by Jacques Offenbach, his Hommageà Rossinifor violoncello and orchestra. Long thought to be lost, this fantasy, dating from 1845, has now been reawokenfrom its Sleeping-Beauty-like slumber thanks to the musicological researches of RaphaelaGromesand can be performed again in time to mark Rossini’s sesquicentenary –173 years after it was composed. For this discographic sensation Raphael Gromesis accompanied by the WDR Fukhausorchesterunder Enrico Delamboye. In the pieces for violoncello and piano, conversely, her accompanist is the pianist Julian Riem, who is also responsible for the arrangements.

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Raphaela Gromes – Serenata Italiana (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 56:42 minutes | 1,05 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sony Music Classical Local

Serenata Italiana is not only Raphaela Gromes’s homage to Italy, it is also the result of a voyage of discovery with her pianist Julian Riem. “What was particularly thrilling for us was to decode each composer’s musical language.” In consequence this recording is not least a welcome demonstration of the fact that, however much it may have been overshadowed by great opera composers, Italy can still offer us a whole series of magnificent trouvailles from the by no means infertile field of chamber music. The listener will discover quite unknown but marvelous pieces by Martucci, Busoni, Castelnuovo-Tedesco and Casella. Ms. Gromes gained decisive musical insight in master classes by David Geringas, Wolfgang Boettcher, and Yo-Yo Ma. She has been a guest artist at festivals such as the Jungfrau Music Festival Interlaken, the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, the Munich Opera Festival, the Marvao International Music Festival in Portugal, the Edinburgh International Festival and the Rheingau Music Festival. Among other awards, she won First Prize in the Richard Strauss Competition in 2012, First Prize at the International Concorso Fiorindo in Turin in 2013 as well as the 2016 German Music Competition Prize in the solo cello category. Pianist Julian Riem studied with Michael Schäfer at the Musikhochschule in his native Munich, with Michel Béroff at the Conservatoire National Supérieur in Paris, and with Rudolf Buchbinder at the Musik-Akademie in Basel. He regularly appears as a soloist and chamber musician in Europe, Asia and the US. He plays in the Velit Quartet and the Munich Horn Trio, which won an Echo Klassik Award in 2012.

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Raphaela Gromes – Klengel, Schumann: Romantic Cello Concertos (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:00:45 minutes | 593 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sony Classical

Raphaela Gromes has long been celebrated for her highly virtuoso, brilliant and passionately expressive cello playing. What also distinguishes this exceptional musician is her enjoyment of the musical treasure hunt. With her last Sony Classical release, she delighted audiences with the world premiere recording of the original version of the cello sonata by Richard Strauss. On her new album, Gromes surprises again with a world premiere recording of the Cello Concerto by Julius Klengel, who was already acclaimed as a new wonder cellist in his early years throughout Europe. The previously unpublished manuscript of this concerto has now been specially arranged for Gromes which she recorded together with the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin conducted by Nicholas Carter. Raphaela’s album also features the famous cello concerto by Robert Schumann, a Romance for cello and orchestra by Richard Strauss and duo pieces by Clara Schumann, Robert Schumann and Brahms. For the duo pieces, Raphaela is accompanied by her long-time piano partner Julian Riem. Robert Schumann’s “”Widmung”” is taken from the song cycle “”Myrthen””. The “”Romance”” by Clara Schumann is originally the middle movement of her first piano concerto. And Brahms’ Hungarian Dance No. 5 is arranged by the famous cellist Alfredo Piatti.

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Raphaela Gromes – Imagination (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:04:45 minutes | 641 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sony Classical

Raphaela Gromes has received acclaim for her highly virtuoso, brilliant and passionately expressive cello playing. What also distinguishes this exceptional musician is her enjoyment of the musical treasure hunt. For this “Imagination”, Raphaela chose imaginative music, music based on stories, on fairy tales. The wide selection includes a waltz from Tchaikovsky’s ballet music Sleeping Beauty, a fairy tale narration by Robert Schumann, the Evening Prayer from Humperdinck’s popular fairy tale opera Hansel and Gretel, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumblebee and other dreamy, magical and highly poetic pieces by Claude Debussy (1862-1918), Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1809-1847), Anton’in Dvor’ak (1841-1904) and Franz Liszt (1811-1886).

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