The cellist Louise Dubin is a renowned performer and researcher of cellist-composer Auguste Franchomme (1808-1884). Her new album Passages, out September 5, 2025 on Bridge Records, features world premiere recordings of works by Chopin and Franchomme alongside compositions by Claude Debussy, Gabriel Fauré, Francis Poulenc, Charles Koechlin and Philippe Hersant. We spoke to her about Franchomme, his association with Chopin, the new album, and more. For more information about Dubin, her recordings and her other projects visit Louise-Dubin.com.
Your first album, The Franchomme Project, has ten world premiere recordings of works by Auguste Franchomme, a composer I’d never heard of before. How did you first learn of him? What made you want to know more, and how did this first recording project come about?
The idea to record The Franchomme Project began when I gave a lecture recital to defend my doctoral dissertation at Indiana University. I’d picked Franchomme as my topic after hearing Anner Bylssma’s beautiful recording of some of his nocturnes. I wanted to see if he’d written other great pieces for the cello. Eventually I found many!
It was hard to find information about Franchomme at first, though. I found one little book written about his connections to Chopin, but it was in Polish. I tried to contact the author, Sophie Ruhlmann, to see if she could send me her book in French or English; she turned out to be hard to find too. Ultimately she responded, saying she’d send me the version of the book written in her native language, French. When I came to France on the research grants from IU, she introduced me to about a dozen of his direct descendants. They showed me their collections, including Franchomme’s personal music library, his practice cello, and unpublished letters and photos.
His letters make him very relatable. For example, he writes in an early letter how tired he was after a day of private cello lessons, chamber music reading with patrons and then an opera performance at night. I found even more goodies at the BnF (National Library of France) when I went back this spring after my concert in Paris, and I’m transcribing one now to which I’ll perform in concert on October 25 in New York.
The descendants are very enthusiastic to have the music of their ancestor’s music recorded and re-introduced to the world, after being out of print and forgotten for two centuries, and I’m happily accepting the task. At this point I’ve probably collected enough materials for a lifetime of projects.
What was Franchomme’s association with Frederic Chopin?
He was a good friend of Chopin; they met in Paris when Franchomme was 24 and Chopin was 22, at a small dinner party Liszt threw for the pianist Stephen Heller. Chopin invited Franchomme back to his apartment afterwards, and Franchomme agreed on condition that Chopin play piano, which he agreed to, and they became fast friends.
They wrote a piece together shortly after that on themes of Robert le Diable (the opera by Meyerbeer), and Franchomme soon made suggestions for a piece Chopin had already written: his Introduction and Polonaise Brillante for cello and piano, which Chopin incorporated into his French edition of the piece. I recorded the premiere of this version on The Franchomme Project.
Franchomme transcribed many of Chopin’s piano pieces for cello, to Chopin’s delight and approval, and his own compositions and even his fingerings bear Chopin’s influence. After Chopin’s death, he compiled several editions of Chopin’s works, including some unpublished pieces, and transcribed even more of them for cello, including the Etude included on Passages.
Your new album, Passages (Bridge Records, released September 5, 2025), also features French cello works— but this time spans three centuries and includes works from the present time. How did you go about selecting the repertoire for this album?
I wanted to record some other favorite works that I’ve performed recently, particularly the ones that people don’t hear very often. The Koechlin sonata was a piece I first performed at the Beauvais International Cello Festival in France, which I chose in response to the director’s request for an unknown French cello sonata.
Like the Debussy sonata, which we also include on Passages, it was written during WW I, but the two are very different. Debussy’s language is concise, sometimes sardonic, with typical classical phrase lengths, very clean and energetic, constantly turning on a dime to a new tempo or a new character. Koechlin was inspired by Zen philosophy, nature (especially light and water), Gregorian chant and other modal music. Like Franchomme, he earned his keep in many ways: orchestrator (of works by Debussy and Fauré among others), teacher (of Poulenc, Cole Porter and many others), radio announcer, and composer.
Koechlin’s sonata hasn’t been recorded often, maybe because it’s a complex piece to put together with the pianist. Spencer Myer ate it up and did a terrific job! The first movement is unhurried and reassuring, and meter is quite incidental. There are multiple instructions throughout the piece to play very evenly without accent, and one bar lasts 24 beats! For us, the second movement is an exploration of grief. It has quintuplets against 2, 3, and 4 beats, and this rhythmic complexity, combined with dissonances, build up to climaxes of cathartic relief. The movement ends in an exhausted, quiet peace. And then a cheerful chant or maybe folk tune is the basis of the last movement. This sonata is an incredible work, very satisfying to play.
I’m grateful to have recorded the cello duos on this album with Julia Bruskin, a fabulous cellist who’s also featured on The Franchomme Project. We love Philippe Hersant’s Caprices – they are like little poems, modelled after Bartok’s violin duos, and some have a similar hint of folk music. But these duos are more dramatic in their emotion than Bartok’s, and more rhythmically complex. We’ll play seven of them at the Passages release concert on October 25 in Manhattan.
The Fauré duo is unpublished, and was first recorded by Steven Isserlis, and our recording is the second. I met Steven when I was his student at Prussia Cove, and we’ve remained friends. He kindly sent me a transcription of the manuscript. I’ve also sent him music, including a Franchomme Nocturne, which he recorded. This duo was a sightreading test Fauré wrote for cellists at the Paris Conservatoire, which he composed when they first hired him.
And you also included some Franchomme works?
Of course! Since it’s a survey of French cello music from the early 1800s to today, I included three more Franchomme pieces, including his gorgeous transcription of Chopin’s cello etude, all recorded here for the first time ever.
Can you tell us a bit about your efforts to get Franchomme’s compositions back in print?
I have a few balls in the air right now, but one that’s completed is my book for Dover Publications. They commissioned me to create a compilation of Franchomme’s cello-piano works and write the introduction. The works are reproduced from first editions, which include Franchomme’s fingerings and bowings—very distinctively his, and definitely not the kind of fingerings I was taught by my teachers! Lots of slides, up and down, very long slurs of many notes, lots of use of the thumb including on long notes, which means they were not heavily vibrated. He clearly had a virtuosic thumb position but according to contemporary reviews, he wasn’t a flashy player; he had an easy facility, played with honesty, sincerity and good taste— all things I aspire to do!
The book includes many of the pieces I recorded on The Franchomme Project, as well as the Air Irlandais Variations and the Chopin transcription from this Passages album. I’m also working on a new article for the NIFC (Frederick Chopin National Institute) in Warsaw. Over the years I’ve transcribed several unpublished manuscripts of Franchomme’s, including the cello quartets, and now I’m completing a new transcription for our concert in New York City on October 25.
What projects are coming up next for you?
My next projects are our album release concerts in New York: October 25 in Manhattan and October 26 in Tuckahoe, with Julia Bruskin, John Novacek and Philippe Muller. We’re playing works from both albums, and my new Franchomme transcription. This fall, I’m also recording a completely unknown, really good Romantic cello sonata with John Novacek, which I’m excited about but can’t talk about until it’s done!