Period of Coming China Tour 2025:

FEMMES -- Cello Recital by German Cellist Raphaela Gromes

7.30pm, March 7, 2025  Guangzhou Opera House 

7.30pm, March 8, 2025  Zhuhai Huafa&cpaa Grand Theatre

7.30pm, March 9, 2025  Changsha Concert Hall

7.30pm, March 13, 2025 Forbidden City Concert Hall, Beijing

German Couple Performs Classical Masterpieces - Cello Piano Duo Concert

10:00am, March 15, 2025  Shanghai Oriental Arts Cener Concert Hall 

In 2014, the DUO Raphaela Gromes & Julian Riem gave a concert as winners of the Richard Strauss Festival, which was recorded with sonatas by Strauss and Mendelssohn and nominated for the 2014 Deutsche Record Critics Award.

In 2017, the duo released their first Sony Classical CD, "Italian Serenades", which featured repertoire in the style of the late Italian Romantics and was praised by the international press and audiences.The second Sony CD, released in 2018, featuring works by Offenbach and Rossini, was well received by the press and entered the German Classical Albums Chart twice.Their third album, entitled Offenbach, was released in May 2019.

The Groms & Rihm Duo has performed in recent years on the stages of prestigious festivals all over the world, including the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival, the Schleswig-Holstein Festival, the Ludwigsburg Festival, the Rheingau Festival, the Malvern International Music Festival, the MDR Summer Festival, and the Moselle Music Week.The duo has appeared on stage in professional concert halls all over the world, including the Vienna Konzerthaus, Tonhalle Zurich, Amsterdam Konzerthaus, Hamburger Rijksmusikhalle, Berlin Konzerthaus and the Allerheiligen-hofkirche Church in Munich, among others, and completed a tour of South Korea in 2018.

At the beginning of 2023 Rafaela Gromes and her partner Julian Rihm joined forces with the Lucerne Festival String Orchestra for their new album "Goddesses of Music", which was released and topped both Amazon's Global Albums Chart and Deutsche Classical Albums, with fans around the globe revelling in the dreamlike web of the Goddesses of Music, enjoying and celebrating the musical extravaganza.

In March 2025, the beloved German "music goddess" cellist Raffaella and her close partner Julian will come back to China for another tour, bringing a multi-dimensional feast of classical music to their fans! Covering six cities across China, the tour will not only feature the duo's favourite works by German and Austrian classical composers such as Bach, Beethoven and Richard Strauss, but also the richness of their "FEMMES" album, which was awarded the top spot in the global classical music charts in 2023. Rafaela's performance of these female composers' tenderness and power, the emotion and drama of their repertoire, and their collaboration with pianist Julien Ricam, creates an empathetic connection between the two of them and the listener.

Raphaela Gromes

Described by Rondo Magazine as "probably the most successful German cellist of the present day", Raphaela Gromes has been an exclusive artist at Sony Classical since 2016 and convinces audiences and press with "elegance, commitment, technical perfection, expressiveness and a range of variations in dynamics and vibrato" (Le Diapason).

She attracted attention early on with intelligently designed programmes and exciting world premiere recordings, for example with the rediscovery of Offenbach's "Hommage á Rossini", Richard Strauss's first cello sonata, or the cello concertos by Julius Klengel and Matilde Capuis. Her recordings have received many awards, including the OPUS Klassik, the Diapason D ́Or and the German Record Critics' Prize.

For some time now, Raphaela Gromes has also been increasingly committed to music by female composers that has been unjustly forgotten, on her globally celebrated album "Femmes" she presented 23 female composers from the Middle Ages to the present day, topping the German classical charts for months.

In addition to performances at the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Tonhalle Zurich, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, the BOZAR in Brussels and the KKL Lucerne, tours have also taken her to the USA, China, Korea and Central America. She plays with orchestras such as the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne, the NDR Orchestra Hamburg, the DSO Berlin, the Festival Strings Lucerne and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra and works with conductors such as Julian Rachlin, Kent Nagano, Pietari Inkinen, Roberto Gonzales – Monjas and Anna Rakitina.

After her junior studies in Leipzig with Peter Bruns, Raphaela Gromes continued her music studies in Munich with Wen-Sinn Yang and in Vienna with Reinhard Latzko in 2010 and received important impulses at master classes with David Geringas, Yo-Yo Ma, Wolfgang Boettcher, Kristin van der Goltz and Anner Bylsma.

Since her studies, Raphaela Gromes has formed a permanent duo with the pianist Julian Riem, who also works as an arranger and thus lays the foundation for the diversity of her programs, for example with harp, voice or saxophone quartet. Their performances are celebrated as an "asset for the music world" because they would "redefine instrumental duetting in their own way": "Gromes and Riem make chamber music in a symbiotic way" (Wilhelm Sinkowicz, Die Presse).

Several works have already been dedicated to the duo Gromes – Riem, including works by Johannes Wiederhofer, Kevin Volans, Dorothea Hofmann and Igor Loboda ("Arcobaleno della vita", a double concerto for cello, piano and string orchestra).

As an ambassador for SOS Children's Villages worldwide and the José Carreras Foundation, Raphaela Gromes is committed to bringing hope, joy and comfort through her music to places where people face difficult challenges. Most recently, she went to Kyiv in solidarity with Ukraine to give a concert in the Philharmonic Hall with the Ukrainian National Orchestra. She also recorded her new CD with the Ukrainian National Orchestra and Volodymyr Sirenko with Dvorak's Cello Concerto and works by Ukrainian composers and will also perform with them in autumn 2024 at the Berlin Philharmonie, Essen Philharmonic and in Vaduz and Antwerp, among others. In addition to debuts with the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana and in Japan, Australia and Taiwan, Raphaela Gromes will also perform various programmes in various formations as Artist in Residence at a major German music festival in 2025.

Raphaela Gromes plays a cello by Carlo Bergonzi from 1740, which is made available to her by private hands.

Julian Riem 

He sculpts Debussy's final completed cycle with effortlessness, brilliance and a subtle touch, eliciting captivating nuances from this music which is as virtuosic as it is melodiously florid. (...) Highly complex pianistically, pushing tonal limits at times, Riem takes the unique idiosyncrasies of this fascinating music to extremes. Without fail, he perfectly nails the pieces, most of which are only a minute or so in length – a brilliant addition to Debussy's far better known cycle. (Etudes by Debussy and Szimanowski, Tyx-Art) Klassik Heute

Julian Riem is one of the most versatile pianists in the classical world today. As a soloist, chamber musician and Lied accompanist, he performs on a regular basis in Europe, Asia and America. Even at an early age, he was considered by his mentors – none other than Michel Béroff, Michael Schäfer and Rudolf Buchbinder – to be one of the “most promising pianists of his generation”.

His exceptional musicality is reflected in his open mind for all things new, his love of arrangements for piano, chamber music and orchestra, and his affinity for contemporary works.

Julian Riem makes regular guest appearances at international festivals, including the Munich Opera Festival, the Festspiele Mecklenburg Vorpommern, the Rheingau-, the Schleswig-Holstein- and the Mosel-Musikfestival, Musica mundi in Brüssel, Les Muséiques in Basel, the  Tucson Friends of Chambermusic, Arizona, Barge Music New York, Tongyeong International Music Festival, Korea, and the International Music Festival Marvão, Portugal, in addition to performing in major concert halls such as the Konzerthaus Vienna, Het Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Konzerthaus Berlin, Tonhalle Maag Zurich, Bunkakaikan Tokyo and Munich's Herkulessaal.

He has won prizes at international piano competitions in Modena, Madrid and Premio Gui in Florence, was a scholarship holder of the German Music Competition and has received numerous awards for his numerous CD recordings, including an Echo Klassik, an Opus Klassik, the German Record Critics' Award and a Diapason d'Or. He won the Grand Prize at the 2022 International Petrichor Music Competition for his piano trio arrangement of the Scherzo from Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

He and cellist Raphaela Gromes form an established duo whose six CD recordings to date with Sony Classical have each climbed the official German classical music charts. These CDs include world premiere recordings and numerous arrangements by Julian Riem.

In addition to the classical concert repertoire, Riem is an advocate of modern and contemporary composers; in addition to Messiaen, Ligeti, Stockhausen, Henze, Boulez, Xenakis, Schnittke, and Hartmann, his programs frequently include works and premieres by Liebermann, Stahmer, Bourbodakis, Illes, Koch, Cowell, and Ranjbaran.

He has collaborated musically with artists such as Christoph Poppen, Julian Rachlin, Albrecht Menzel, Markus Wolf, Wen-Sinn Yang, Reinhard Latzko, Isabelle van Keulen, Georg Arzberger und Andreas Schablas, sowie Susanne Kelling, Carolina Ulrich und Juliane Banse.