Alpha is very proud to welcome this grande dame of lyric art. A great Mozartian, Veronique Gens also excels in Gluck, Berlioz and Offenbach and has sung with the greatest, from Claudio Abbado to Marc Minkowski or Frans Brüggens.

Her rich discography features numerous repertoires but, up until now, it included only one recording of mélodies, whereas she is unanimously recognized as one of the world’s most eminent ambassadresses of the French art song.

With her accomplice Susan Manoff, a connoisseur of vocal music and a tremendously sensitive pianist, she has assembled this programme devoted to songs she loves, mixing a few well-known gems and others, quite rare, such as the superb Néère, from Reynaldo Hahn’s Etudes latines.

Reviews

Véronique Gens’s new album is an important issue on several fronts. First and foremost, it is arguably the most perfectly realised recital of French songs since Stéphane Degout’s very different ‘Mélodies’ (Naïve). Second, it is quite remarkable and insightful in its programming. [...] Gens, as one might expect, is exceptional in this repertoire. Most of the songs are about erotic anticipation and tristesse, and her dark, slightly smoky tone adds to the sensuality of it all. She sings as much off the text as the line, but nothing is nudged or forced in an overtly interventionist way. Tim Ashley

Gramophone January 2016