Franck, Boulanger, Debussy & Vermeulen: Works for Cello and Piano

Featuring

Lidy Blijdorp
Tobias Borsboom
César Franck
Nadia Boulanger
Claude Debussy
Matthijs Vermeulen

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Recording & Production

This album was recorded at MCO Hilversum, The Netherlands, between December 11-13, 2024, using Brüel & Kjær 4006 and Schoeps microphones.

Instruments

Cellist Lidy Blijdorp plays a Farotti cello formerly owned by Anner Bylsma and a Persoit bow on loan from the Dutch National Musical Instruments Foundation.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Claude Debussy, despite popular perception, was not a great lover of musical impressionism, drawing inspiration for his late chamber works from 18th-century commedia dell'arte and Watteau's paintings.

Composition History

César Franck's Violin Sonata, originally promised decades earlier to Cosima von Bülow, was unexpectedly offered to Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe as a wedding present in 1886.

Compositional Technique

Franck's Sonata achieves remarkable unity across its four movements through the use of a single musical motif, blending French lyricism with northern restraint and German Romanticism.

Composer Biography

Nadia Boulanger, though best known as a pedagogue who taught talents like Aaron Copland and Philip Glass, ceased composing entirely after her sister Lili's death in 1918.