Melissa Lesnie

Melissa Lesnie

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.

Articles by Melissa Lesnie

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CD and Other Review

Review: Dances to a Black Pipe (clarinet: Martin Frost; ACO/Tognetti)

Anyone who saw Swedish clarinettist Martin Fröst twist, twirl, strut and shimmy his way through his national tour with the ACO last year will know what a physically engaging showman he is. So it’s natural that he would record a dance-themed album during the tour, and no surprise it’s the most eclectic and inspired program the ACO has committed to disc. Hillborg’s Peacock Tales creates a spellbinding atmosphere even without its visual component, Fröst running the expressive and technical gauntlet against an eerie backdrop of clustered strings. Copland’s Clarinet Concerto is equally virtuosic. Both soloist and orchestra (with added piano and harp) are bright and punchy right up to the final clarinet glissando. Fröst is spirited and idiomatic in klezmer tunes scored by his brother Göran and attacked with gusto by the ACO. Göran’s arrangements of Brahms’s Hungarian Dances are well served by the soloist’s lightness of touch and flawless intonation, but it’s the band’s sweeping romanticism that carries these pieces. The most fun on the disc, however, is Högberg’s highly charged Dancing with Silent Purpose with its manic electronic beat. The Expressive Rage movement gives the ACO an opportunity to rock out… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from…

January 25, 2012
Uncategorised
CD and Other Review

Review: QUINTOPIA (New Sydney Wind Quintet)

The wind quintet offers such a kaleidoscope of colours and characterisation that it’s surprising only a handful of composers have made significant contributions to the genre. Happily, there are superb arrangements to be had, and for their second album the New Sydney Wind Quintet has chosen some real gems. Ravel’s fairytale suite Ma Mère l’Oye (Mother Goose), originally for piano four hands, is the perfect candidate for arrangement. NSWQ’s accomplished orchestral players understand the composer’s rich palette: they are agile and enchanting in the Empress of the Pagodas and bassoonist Andrew Barnes teases out the humour in Beauty and the Beast. Balanced tone in the languid movements comes at the expense of dynamic and dramatic variation, but the quintet throw themselves impressively into the final trills and fanfare. Of the three Percy Grainger miniatures, Lisbon demonstrates how naturally NSWQ’s soloistic passages bend the ear as they emerge from delicately blended textures. Two works by another Australian composer, Lyle Chan, seize the opportunity for mercurial, mischievous wind writing. Passage is fun for players and listeners alike with its jaunty, jazz-inflected syncopation and swing. His rather docile Calcium Light Night, however, yields an uninspired performance. Carl Nielsen’s quintet is the… Continue reading Get unlimited digital…

January 16, 2012