Marie-Nicole Lemieux’s latest album, a recital of songs from the 1890s, is essentially an extended exercise in the voluptuous and the sensual. French music is placed alongside Rachmaninov and Wolf. The mood is heady, if a bit samey throughout. A bit too much of the Canadian contralto’s material depends on a soft, breathy delivery for its effect. Fine though much of this is, it comes as something of a relief when her Rachmaninov proves to be full-toned, in-your-face and blatant, and her Koechlin sounds witty and faintly dirty. There are plenty of surprises along the way. Lemieux’s Wolf, sung off the lines rather than treated as declamation, is idiosyncratic but enchanting. Even more striking is her decision to programme songs by Lekeu and Chausson that use not a solo piano, but a piano quintet for accompaniment: Roger Vignoles, super-subtle throughout, is joined by the Quatuor Psophos, and the results are beautiful in the extreme.
