It's not news that the ideas of imagination and fantasy are central to Romantic music, and in its basic outlines, this recital might have been common enough a century ago. It consists of short works, mostly for cello and piano with some ghostly appearances by a saxophone quartet, violin, harp, and a second cello, and only one work is longer than five minutes. However, the program by cellist Raphaela Gromes and pianist Julian Riem is deeper than most. It includes some delightful obscurities, such as the Märchen for ...
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It's not news that the ideas of imagination and fantasy are central to Romantic music, and in its basic outlines, this recital might have been common enough a century ago. It consists of short works, mostly for cello and piano with some ghostly appearances by a saxophone quartet, violin, harp, and a second cello, and only one work is longer than five minutes. However, the program by cellist Raphaela Gromes and pianist Julian Riem is deeper than most. It includes some delightful obscurities, such as the Märchen for Violoncello und Klavier, Op. 8, of Paul Juon, and the Forgotten Fairy Tales, Op. 4, of Edward MacDowell. Riem contributes several arrangements that add a great deal of variety, such as the "Song of the Moon" from Dvorák's Rusalka, Op. 114, which gives Gromes the opportunity to display her lovely cantabile, and in another vein, Rimsky-Korsakov's Flight of the Bumblebee. Also notable is another arrangement, that of the Märchenstunde, a song by little-known composer Margarete Schweikert. The...
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