10/10
Mélanie Laurent, harp.
Indésens Calliope Records, 2025.
Gold medal winner of the USA International Harp Competition, French harpist Mélanie Laurent, describes the thrill of finally capturing performances in permanent form. “Music is an art of the moment. The notes vanish as soon as they appear, leaving behind only the emotion they stirred, like shooting stars. That is why, when a musician records an album, they finally experience the sense of completion painters feel before their finished canvas.”
On her latest album, Pastel, Laurent plays with the energy, verve, and daring of a soloist on stage, walking that tightrope between precision and inspiration. Her program, focused on works of the 20th century, weaves a luminous tapestry of rarities, masterpieces, and new transcriptions in an exquisite mix of poetry and intimacy that feels both voluptuous and fleeting.
The journey begins with Marcel Grandjany’s melancholic take on the cowboy song The Colorado Trail, a work that reveals Laurent’s impassioned temperament. She pivots quickly to the mid-century exoticism of Marcel Tournier’s Pastels du Vieux Japon, a handsome vehicle for her riveting, seductive style. This is a harpist with something to say, and the instinct to say it at precisely the right moment.
Two elegant piano-salon transcriptions from the fin de siècle follow, Cécile Chaminade’s Valse d’Automne and Mel Bonis’s Près du ruisseau, offering a moment of repose before the bright neoclassicism of Germaine Tailleferre’s Sonatine. Here, Laurent’s playing is exacting yet effortless, as though she is channeling the music rather than interpreting it. One could happily listen all day.
This quality shines especially in Jacques de la Presle’s Le Jardin Mouillé, an impressionistic tour de force that evokes a rain-soaked garden, each droplet clearing an inner darkness. Laurent brings similar tenderness to Henriette Renié’s Contemplation and Grandjany’s Rhapsodie, works that require temperament and musical insight more than sheer virtuosity.
Joined by a soul-linked string quartet, Laurent shapes a vivid narrative in Claude Debussy’s Danse sacrée et danse profane, among the finest performances on this already exceptional disc, matched by what follows in a revelatory reading of Maurice Ravel’s Introduction et Allegro. She closes with the simplicity and serenity of Tournier’s L’éternel rêveur, a gentle reminder that Laurent is establishing herself as a master of this repertoire.
