Louise Dubin: Passages
Bridge Records

Passages is cellist Louise Dubin's follow-up to both her 2015 album The Franchomme Project and the publication that followed two years later, Selected Works for Cello and Piano by Auguste Franchomme. As their titles suggest, Dubin's spent decades researching the life and music of cellist-composer Franchomme (1808-84), and in fact Passages perpetuates that relationship in presenting the world premiere recordings of his Nocturne, Op. 14/2 and Air Irlandais, Variè, Op. 25/3, and supplements them with his arrangement of Chopin's Étude, Op. 25/7. Enhancing this recital of three centuries-spanning French cello music are performances of pieces by Debussy, Fauré, Poulenc, Koechlin, and Philippe Hersant (b. 1948). Sonically, the fifty-minute recording complements performances by Dubin and pianist Spencer Myer with ones by her and fellow cellist Julia Bruskin.

The title holds deep personal meaning for Dubin. Not only does it allude to the many trips she's taken across the Atlantic Ocean to France, it also refers to life passages of great significance, the birth of her daughter and the passing of her father. Dubin herself is as accomplished as they come. Currently performing with the Baltimore and New Jersey Symphonies, she's delivered chamber music and solo recitals throughout the world with a variety of ensembles and excels in both the traditional and contemporary repertoires. Her gifts as a writer are also well-accounted for in the in-depth liner notes she produced for Passages. Historical contexts for the works and bio-related details about their creators are provided, as well as succinct commentaries on the pieces performed.

A student of Fauré's at the Conservatoire de Paris, Charles Koechlin's music inaugurates the release with the Sonate Pour Violoncelle et Piano, Op. 66, published in 1917 and exquisitely realized by Dubin and Meyer. Alongside the pianist's shimmering chords, the cellist's ravishing tone is showcased in the opening part's sinuous movements. Koechlin apparently found inspiration in Buddhism (among other things), and it's audible in the serenity of the becalmed “Très Modéré.” As lovely is the luminous central part, “Andante quasi Adagio,” which weaves mystery into its multi-dimensional design. Tranquility but also an enigmatic, ethereal quality emerges as the duo navigates the material's emotional terrain. The chant-like character of the first movement returns for the third, with the long, explorative “Final” imbuing the work with a graceful poetic quality as well as an aura of mystery. When Fauré became professor of composition at the conservatoire in 1896, one of his duties involved composing short pieces for students to sight-read in competitive exams, including the Allegro Moderato pour deux Violoncelles, an engrossing miniature written a year later and performed with great feeling by the cellists.

The inspiration behind Franchomme's Nocturne was Chopin, whom he met at an 1832 dinner party hosted by Franz Liszt. Six years after that meeting, Franchomme wrote a romantic setting that seems to reflect nostalgically and with intense fondness upon the events of that encounter—an impression that forms, at least, when the cellists lend such stirring voice to the material. He arranged over fifty pieces by Chopin, including his Étude, published in 1870 as part of a group of six. Its rhapsodic theme was inspired by a cello solo in Bellini's Norma, and its emotional poignancy clearly struck a powerful chord with Dubin, given the riveting rendering she delivers with Myer by her side. Franchomme used an Irish air as a basis for his 1841-published Air Irlandais, Variè, a beguiling cello-and-piano travelogue engaging for its regal character, lightness of spirit, and fulsome melodic charm. The elegiac tone of Sérénade, Maurice Gendron's arrangement of the closing song from Francis Poulenc's eight Chansons Gaillardes (1926), would seem to have been influenced by the tragedies of the war that ended only a handful of years earlier, but the music exudes hope as much as it does solemnity.

On the contemporary composition tip, the three minute-long pieces from Hersant's Caprices pour 2 violoncelles derive from a set of eleven he created for violin duo in 1994 and then updated for cello duo in 2005. Each intensely concentrated miniature probes a specific melodic or rhythmic idea, from the mournful “Champs mornes” and animated “Encore un petit ornement…"to the dagger-thrusting “Un combat…" The latter's theme carries over into the album's closing sonata by Debussy. As revealed in a letter sent to his publisher in 1915, he conceived his Sonate pour Violoncelle et Piano, written in the middle of World War I, as a “secret homage” to “the youth of France, idiotically mown down.” Programmatic aspect aside, the three-part piece possesses many qualities one associates with Debussy, including elegant expression, rhythmic flow, and daring harmonic gestures. Its sober, contemplative “Prologue” sets a thoughtful stage for the livelier “Sérénade” and radiant “Finale” that follow.

December 2025