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Édouard Lassen never stopped composing. His copious oeuvre contains examples of almost every genre in favour in the second half of the 19th century, from piano pieces to operas, choral works, symphonic and concertante pieces. His international reputation was secured especially by his theatrical works. He also produced a regular and uninterrupted flow of over 260 songs from 1857 until his death in 1904. The small-scale song form was ideally suited to his temperament imbued with universalism, assuming a dual cultural heritage. The immediate charm of Lassen's art songs rests on a fusion between a perfect German prosody and a melodious amplitude inherited from the French tradition, the one bringing out the performer's talents as dramatist and narrator, the other the beauty of their voice and their musicality. It is with mastery that Reinoud Van Mechelen, accompanied by pianist Anthony Romaniuk, rekindles the breath of his now unjustly forgotten melodies, mixing intimacy and depth of sensation.
