Duparc's morbid and neurotic perfectionism led him to destroy a large number of his compositions, so that little remains of his artistic legacy beyond just over a baker's dozen of songs (though it is surely time we had another recording of his symphonic poem Lenore?); but those songs may justly be held to represent the peak of development of the French melodie in their sensitivity, intensity, scope of expression and unfaltering taste. Influences may be seen of his teacher Cesar Franck in his emotionalism and chromatic texture, of Gounod in the rippling piano part of a song like Chanson triste, and particularly of Wagner in the harmonic colouring of Soupir and the almost Tristanesque Extase; but it has been well observed that the sinister drama of Le Manoir de Rosemonde, with its insistent rhythm, is worthy of Hugo Wolf, and that the bleak tints of Lamento show some foreshadowing of Ravel's Le gibet. Despite all this, however, Duparc is very much an individual genius; and the breadth of his stylistic range, from the passionate lyricism of L'Invitation au voyage or the haunting sensuousness of Phidyle to the simple heartbreak of Au pays ou se fait la guerre, makes any integrale of his songs of riveting interest. Particularly so when sung with such imaginative insight, commitment and verbal intensity as by Jose van Dam here: although he commands a seductive intimate mezza voce too, in general he employs a richer, fuller tone than Francois Le Roux in his admirable set (REM, 9/89)—a tone always beautiful even at its most forceful (as in the almost operatic violence of La Vague et la cloche); and he is expertly partnered by a responsively musical young Polish accompanist, Maciej Pikulski. Van Dam's feeling for verbal nuance and meaning is outstanding—especially important in view of the fact that all these songs are settings of poems of high literary quality. His pupil Florence Bonnafous—a pretty, small voice with a quick vibrato rather like Mady Mesple's—has two songs on her own and joins him in Gautier's more rarely heard Oriental dialogue La Fuite (to which Pikulski makes a valuable contribution).'