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”.