Richard Strauss: Cello Sonatas

With her last album “Offenbach”, the highly acclaimed Munich cellist Raphaela Gromes has already conquered number 3 in the German classical music charts and also made it onto the Best List 3 / 2019 of the German Record Critics’ Award

Now their new album is being released with a sensation: the first recording of a previously unreleased cello sonata by Richard Strauss. The popular Sonata for Violoncello and Piano op. 6 by Richard Strauss from 1883 was considered his only cello sonata until now. What was not known until now: it was actually his second cello sonata. For Richard Strauss had written the Sonata in F major for piano and cello, which was recorded for the first time in 1881 at the age of 16, originally for a composition competition. And for the Sonata in F major op. 6, published two years later, he actually only used parts of this sonata in the first movement. Raphaela Gromes and her piano partner Julian Riem have now recorded the original version of this young stroke of genius and juxtaposed it with the well-known Cello Sonata op. 6

The album is also interesting because of the first recording of Strauss songs, which pianist Julian Riem arranged for cello and piano: these include such well-known pieces as “Zueignung”, “Die Nacht”, “Morgen!” and “Cäcilie”. As a bonus track, the album features another arrangement by Julian Riem: a six-minute waltz from the famous “Rosenkavalier”.