Le Secret: Music for Cello & Harp

The cellist Olga Dowbusch-Lubotsky has given many first performances, and worked closely with some of the most eminent composers of our time, including Sofia Gubaidulina, Knut Nystedt, Alexander Raskatov, Alfred Schnittke, Viktor Suslin, Valentin Silvestrov and Galina Ustvolskaya.
Born and brought up in Russia, she has long been resident in Germany, giving concerts across Europe and the US with fellow musicians such as Schnittke’s widow Irina, the violinist Mark Lubotsky, pianists Geoffrey Douglas Madge and Ralf Gothoni, and many others.
Her latest album takes its title and its inspiration from a song by Gabriel Fauré, setting a text by Armand Silvestre: ‘Would that the morn were unaware/Of the name I told to the night,/ And that in the dawn breeze, silently,/ It would vanish like a tear.’
The idea of this intimate confession carries through to the arrangement and performance of music both famous and unfamiliar. The Fauré song weaves its sensuous magic in an instrumental transcription. The reflective mood is sustained by Tchaikovsky’s Valse sentimentale, Glazunov’s Chant du ménéstrel and Bloch’s Prayer.
Le Secret is not the only miniature masterpiece by Fauré on the album; Olga Dowbusch-Lubotsky and Sophia Whitson also play a transcription of Après un rêve. More French accented musical intimacies include ‘The Swan’ from Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals, the Elégie by Massenet and a Promenade by Marcel Tournier.
Bach at his most serene also belongs in this company, with the Air from the Suite No.3 and the Ave Maria in Gounod’s recomposition of the C major Prelude.
Partnering Olga Dowbusch-Lubotsky for this unique recital is the harpist Sophia Whitson, who has appeared with many of Germany’s finest orchestras, in Hamburg, Bamberg, Munich and elsewhere.

- This new album presents a generous selection of popular short works for cello and harp, an unusual but attractive and highly enjoyable combination.
- The program includes such all-time favourites as Ave Maria (Bach/Gounod), Après une rêve (Fauré), Le Cygne (Saint-Saëns), Élégie (Massenet), Melodie (Dvořák), Prayer (Bloch), Valse Sentimentale (Tchaikovsky) and Spiegel im Spiegel (Pärt).
- Lovingly played by Olga Dowbusch-Lubotsky (cello) and Sophia Whitson (harp).