César Franck - Sonata in A major (arrangement for cello and piano by Jules Delsart); Claude Debussy - Sonata for Cello and Piano.

Premiere album, released on February 13th, 2026

With their new album, cellist Lidy Blijdorp and pianist Tobias Borsboom from the Netherlands explore chamber creations from the late Romanticism and the beginnings of French musical modernism: pieces by Claude Debussy, César Franck, Nadia Boulanger, but also a score signed by Matthijs Vermeulen, a Dutch composer who lived for 25 years in France and was inspired in his creative art by Claude Debussy.

I am proposing, for the first time on Radio România Muzical, selections from this album which opens with an arrangement for cello and piano of the Sonata in A major written in 1886 by César Franck for Violin and Piano - one of the most well known scores of this French-Belgian composer and at the same time an emblematic sonata from the chamber repertoire, combining rich harmonic structures of the Romantic type with classical traditions in cyclic forms. The adaptation for cello and piano of this score was made, with the approval of César Franck, by the French cellist and teacher Jules Delsart, who is also known in the history of music for this instrumental arrangement that highlights the consistent and warm sonorities of the cello in the music of a special expressiveness created by César Franck. With an intense and warm sound, richly vibrated, cellist Lidy Blijdorp reveals the suggestive sound colors of the Sonata in A major, in a captivating instrumental dialogue carried out with pianist Tobias Borsboom. From the same album, I selected for the CD Review section the Sonata for cello and piano composed and published by Claude Debussy in 1915.

Lidy Blijdorp released her debut album in 2020, when she was named "the most important talent of the year in this country in classical music" by the Dutch press and received two Edison Awards. She studied at the Conservatories of Amsterdam and Paris and has performed as a soloist with the Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra and the Orchestra of the 18th Century. And her musical partner on these recent recordings, pianist Tobias Borsboom, has performed on major stages in the Netherlands after winning the Dutch Classical Talent Award; he is passionate about chamber music and, in addition to his concert career, works as an accompanist pianist at the Amsterdam Conservatory. Cellist Lidy Blijdorp and pianist Tobias Borsboom have collaborated closely in recent years and form a homogeneous, balanced duo, offering stylistically appropriate and expressive interpretations to the various types of repertoires approached.