Melissa Lesnie bid a tearful farewell to Limelight in 2013 to move to Paris, where Warner Music kindly sorted her visa. She now works for Radio France and spends her spare time singing in the Latin Quarter jazz bars. Follow her adventures at @francemusique and @throwingmyarmsaroundparis.
The festival teams the world’s hottest bands with orchestras and innovative composers. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in
The baritone’s classic performances captured on video: Schubert, Schumann, Bach and more. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in
The British conductor will be the MSO’s knight in shining armour after three years of uncertainty. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in
A widow's grief writ large on canvas has won the public's heart in the 2012 Archibald Prize.
For a singer so attuned to the undulating tones of the French language, Renée Fleming has recorded relatively little Gallic repertoire apart from the Massenet operas. This album redresses the balance in a tour de force of 20th-century orchestral songs. In Ravel’s Shéhérazade, the American soprano’s rich, finely matured instrument floats above the opulent orchestration and serpentine flute. Her operatic sense of storytelling embodies Scheherazade herself, who tantalises her king and captor with one tale after another in 1,001 Arabian Nights. In some declamatory passages, however, her voice loses the lustre and carefully placed diction heard elsewhere. Messiaen’s erotic yet deeply spiritual Poèmes for Mi, settings of his own text dedicated to his first wife, were written almost 40 years after Shéhérazade. Fleming exerts a siren-like thrall when she is left exposed in the orchestra’s pregnant pauses. She caresses the ear with impeccable intonation, luxuriating in the long, melismatic “Alleluia”. Later in the cycle, she unveils the satisfying warmth of her lower range, and exploits her keen dramatic instinct in the deranged laughter and visceral imagery of Terror. Alan Gilbert and the Orchestre Philharmonique give these challenging pieces their all in a kaleidoscope of colours, textures and nuances, shimmering strings……
The Canadian singer-songwriter turned opera composer gets his hands on some fine pianos. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in
The opera powerhouse gets back in the black in 2011. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in
Ten composers behaving badly, from the kinky Percy Grainger to the murderous jealousy of Carlo Gesualdo.
A saltarello is a medieval dance named for its leaping steps (“little hop” in Italian). One might wonder why this meditative, atmospheric album takes a lively dance form as its title when there is only one specimen on the program. In fact it’s the three players who do the jumping – across nine centuries of music, and between Garth Knox’s rustic medieval fiddle, seven-string viola d’amore and modern viola. He switches weapons seamlessly from one track to the next and demonstrates poetic phrasing and technical mastery with all three. Hildegard von Bingen’s Ave, generosa is the earliest music heard here, echoing through time in a vibrato-less, double-stopped fiddle version capturing both soaring chant and drone. A yearning vocal quality resonates throughout this inspired instrumental program, from lilting variations on the folksong Black is the Colour of my True Love’s Hair to Dowland’s Flow My Tears and Purcell’s Music for a While, unerringly matched in mood by Agnès Vesterman’s nuanced cello basslines. Hearing such timeless songs in Knox’s arrangements is to hear them as if they were always intended for these instruments. Curiously, the only work originally scored for viola d’amore, Vivaldi’s concerto RV393, is the least convincing for… Continue reading…
The German-born composer and music critic for The Age dies at the age of 90. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in
Richard Tognetti is the cover star with a no-holds-barred interview. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in
The well-endowed Melbourne label was the envy of the Australian record industry… until the cash dried up. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in
The American soprano joins Lang Lang, Alfie Boe and… Kylie Minogue in concert at Buckingham Palace. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in
