Alchemy: Alex De Taeye & Lucie Vellère

In bringing together in the same recording the trios of Alex De Taeye and of Lucie Vellère, we create a dialogue with two contrasting yet profoundly complementary voices of twentieth century Belgian music. They were contemporary, brought up in the same cultural climate, and they embody two faces of the same epoch: one, institutional and influential, a recognised figure of the academic milieu; the other, more intimate, almost clandestine, for whom chamber music was a refuge of liberty and sincerity.

Their trios, though exceptional in their respective catalogues, share the same demand for clarity, balance and sensitivity. Each has an individual aesthetic: that of De Taeye, the inheritor of a bountiful, controlled post-romanticism; that of Vellère, imbued with an inner gentleness and a heightened sense of colour. Set side-by-side, these two works form a mirror portrait of a musical Belgium lying between tradition and modernity, between public illumination and poetic reclusion.