Raphaela Gromes IMAGINATION

 

IMAGINATION

 

Raphaela Gromes, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Nicholas Carter

ROMANTIC CELLO CONCERTOS

 

Raphaela Gromes / Julian Riem / Wen-Sinn Yang OFFENBACH

                                                                     OFFENBACH

Raphaela Gromes / Julian Riem RICHARD STRAUSS Cello Sonatas

                                                                 CELLO SONATAS

Raphaela Gromes HOMMAGE À ROSSINI

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 barbiere di Siviglia. Now the star violoncellist and exclusive SONY Classical artist Raphaela Gromes pays tribute to Rossini with her latest album. Her Hommage à Rossini naturally features Une Larme, 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 Mosè in Egitto written by the Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů. But pride of place goes to a world-premiere recording of a piece by Jacques Offenbach, his Hommageà Rossini for violoncello and orchestra. Long thought to be lost, this fantasy, dating from 1845, has now been reawoken from its Sleeping - Beauty - like slumber thanks to the musicological researches of Raphaela Gromes and can be performed again in time to mark Rossini’s sesquicentenary – 173 years after it was composed. For this discographic sensation Raphaela Gromes is accompanied by the WDR Funkhausorchester under Enrico Delamboye. In the pieces for violoncello and piano, conversely, her accompanist is the pianist Julian Riem, who is also responsible for the arrangements.

As a child, Raphaela Gromes wanted to become a singer and decided to take up the violoncello because the sounds that this instrument produces come closest to those of the human voice. In her efforts to achieve a “vocal approach” to her Rossini programme, she sought advice on the technical mysteries of bel canto from the soprano Juliane Banse and the mezzo-soprano Daphne Evangelatos. In this way she has been able to come closer to Rossini’s declared ideal of “sweet Italian singing that comes from the heart”.

Raphaela Gromes / Julian Riem SERENATA ITALIANA

Italy produced a wealth of fine Romantic instrumental music between the late 19th and mid-20th centuries, and some of the names on this disc used to be far more familiar than they are today. So don’t be put off by the packaging: this really isn’t the sort of potboiler you might expect. The young German cellist Raphaela Gromes deserves only applause for putting together such an imaginative debut recital.

The 16-year old Busoni’s skittish, lilting Serenata serves as an overture to the disc’s centrepiece, the Cello Sonata by Giuseppe Martucci. Already, two things are clear: the cello seems to have inspired this particular school of Italian composers to music that’s either melancholy or sparkling. And Gromes makes a very attractive sound, warm but clearly defined at the top, big and sonorous at the bottom. The piano is slightly recessed and the acoustic is generous, which inevitably means that the cello’s C string has a tendency to boom at the expense of Julian Riem’s stylish piano-playing; a minor quibble.

And Gromes clearly feels passionately about the Martucci, which she compares to Brahms, though I found that a little of Martucci’s soaring cello over turbulent piano-writing goes a long way. Matilde Capuis’s wartime Animato con passione contains nothing that would have startled Verdi, but Gromes combines sincere expression and needlepoint brilliance in Sinigaglia’s two miniatures and wraps it all up with an effortlessly nonchalant account of Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s jaw-droppingly flashy paraphrase on Rossini’s ‘Largo al factotum’. Some cellists give a triumphant shout of ‘Figaro!’ at the end of this piece. Gromes, modestly, doesn’t: a shame, because she’s earned it. (Richard Bratby / Gramophone)