The audience response was very positive, with prolonged applause and much cheering at the end, yet especially in the first half I felt out of step with this degree of enthusiasm. Hers is big voice used to projecting in major international concert halls and opera houses and in the Schumann songs there was a harshness in the tone that did not suit the music. Furthermore it was not always easy to hear the words.

Things improved in the second half because she had by then got the measure of the hall’s acoustic and sang with less effort. She seemed more at home in the French repertoire with its allusive and sometimes ironic style. The impressionist Roussel songs were imaginatively done and she showed a keen sense of humour in the Poulenc and Honegger items. Her love of jazz stood her in good stead for the concluding Richard Rodney Bennett mini-cycle which she performed stylishly.

Her accompanist was Martin Martineau and he was superb throughout the evening, responsive to every mood of the music and whilst far from self-effacing, he never upstaged his partner. His playing was always expressive, never more so than in the poignant ending of Schumann’s Frauenliebe und Leben. He was always ‘with’ his soloist and entered into the spirit of the lighter items gleefully. His spoken introduction about the substituted items was a model of wit and concision; a major contribution to the evening.

Geoffrey Kinder