Orchestral Works of Mel Bonis album review – full justice is done to her finely crafted and sensuous music

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra/Rumon Gamba/Elizabeth Watts(Chandos) The French composer – a contemporary of Debussy’s – wrote slender but perfectly-formed pieces of beguiling beauty The welcome rediscovery of Mel Bonis continues, and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and conductor Rumon Gamba do full justice to her finely crafted, perfumed orchestral music on this new studio recording. Bonis was a classmate of Debussy, and the best of her works here compare to his in terms of instrumental intrigue, albeit on a smaller scale. Bonis’s most ambitious works for orchestra were the Trois Femmes de Légende, written around 1909. In these beguiling, brief tone poems, Ophelia emerges as a kind of tragic water nymph, Salome as a princess from a far-off, exotic east. Even more mystery surrounds Cleopatra, who is portrayed in music that is sensuous yet uneasy, with quiet writing for the bass instruments underpinning her languid melody. Of the two orchestral songs on the recording, both beautifully delivered by the soprano Elizabeth Watts, Le Chat sur le Toit is especially appealing, a mercurial and imaginative depiction of a cat scampering and meowing across the rooftops. A fleet-fo