Théodore Dubois was a prominent French composer, organist, theorist, and teacher in the mid- to late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but he is perhaps better remembered for a monumental deficit in judgment than for his music itself. He was a staunch conservative, and as director of the Paris Conservatoire, he refused to award the Prix to Rome to
Maurice Ravel in 1905; the outpouring of consternation among the public and among musicians led him to resign his position. Dubois had won the Prix de Rome as a young man and had the beginnings of a successful career in composition, but his music never caught fire in the popular imagination, and his dismissal of impressionism doomed his later work to be considered stodgy and old-fashioned. Dubois wrote with facility and had a gift for melody and traditionally Germanic thematic development. There is little in his chamber music that would make it immediately recognizable as the work of a French composer; in fact, his music sounds almost Brahmsian, but without Brahms' gift for harmonic variety and inventiveness. The two works presented here --a piano quartet and his Quintet for piano, violin, oboe, viola, and cello -- are attractive pieces that are welcome additions for ensembles that don't have a huge repertoire. They are full of Romantic expressivity and drama, and have an appealing and sometimes soaring lyricism. Canadian
Trio Hochelaga, joined by violist Jean-Luc Plourde and oboist Philippe Magnan in technically assured and emotionally charged performances, makes a strong case for taking a second look at Dubois. Atma's sound is clean, warm, and vibrant.