To record the complete sets of Mendelssohn's Songs without Words represents a real challenge, with more than two hours of music. The prodigious pianist Stphane De May shares his passion delicately and thoughtfully through his sensitive performance of these works.

Mendelssohn's aim was, analogous to the lieder for voice and piano, comparable to those by Schubert and Schumann and others to compose them for piano solo, aiming at making sing the piano, thus creating lyrical pieces of a new genre which befell a great success during the second half of the nineteenth century. Thus, the piano is called to simultaneously bring forth a melody and to provide its accompaniment, the two functions being intimately intermingled: one must sing with the fingers. The musician becomes a poet, finding himself in a situation of telling a story which is already there.

There are in all eight cahiers, not forty-eight little pieces which resemble each other, but they all have their own identity, their own particular evocative power and are proof of a richness of inspiration.

A profound positive feeling, made up of enthusiasm, of happiness, but also simple beauty issues forth from all this music. It unleashes a surge, a joy of life, even if it also comprises all the characteristics of German romanticism, quite easily tormented.