Luise 2023

Paul Rivinius is best known as a chamber music player and as a vocal accompanist. He has performed and recorded on both the piano and the French horn. Rivinius was born in Munich, Germany, in 1970. His first instrument was the piano, which he took up at age five. He attended the Musikhochschule Saarbrücken, studying piano with Nerine Barrett, Walter Blankenheim, and Alexander Sellier. After completing his studies there, he moved to the Musikhochschule Frankfurt and studied both piano (with Raymund Havenith) and horn (with Marie-Luise Neunecker).

For years the star cellist and Opus Klassik laureate Raphaela Gromes has taken up the cause of women composers. Three of her albums, acclaimed by critics and listeners alike, have featured music by unknown women composers, and she maintains a long-term working relationship with the "Frau und Musik" Archive in Frankfurt. So it is only natural that her new double album, FEMMES, should lend a voice to outstanding women from nine centuries of music history. No fewer than 23 woman composers found their way onto the double album, from Hildegard of Bingen to Clara Schumann all the way to Lera Auerbach and Billie Eilish, not to mention such famous operatic figures as Susanna from Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro or Bizet's Carmen.

The album “Femmes” (2023) delighted a wide audience with a musical kaleidoscope of female composers from the Baroque to the present day. Now Raphaela Gromes is continuing this success story with the double album “Fortissima”. The new double album (Sony Classical) with sonatas and cello concertos by female composers will be released on September 12, 2025, and the accompanying non-fiction book (Goldmann Verlag) will be published at the same time under the same title. Together, the album and book form a unique synthesis of music and text that finally gives long-forgotten female composers the attention they deserve.