Véronique Gens - Nuits review I Andrew Clements's classical album of the month

The Guardian 80

Gens/I Giardini
(Alpha)
Gens’s nuanced, beguiling singing in this selection of 19th-century mélodies clarifies a sometimes unconvincing selection

Véronique Gens’s recording of Chausson’s Poème de l’Amour et la Mer was one of last year’s outstanding releases, and a song by Chausson also forms the centrepiece of her latest recital disc of (mostly) 19th-century French mélodies – his Chanson Perpétuelle, in the scoring with piano quintet. Gens and the chamber ensemble I Giardini perform it here, alongside Guillaume Lekeu’s similarly scored Nocturne and other songs arranged for the same combination. In some cases that requires only minor adjustments – Fauré’s La Bonne Chanson (from which Gens sings just one number, alas) already exists in a version for voice, piano and string quintet, and little is lost by dropping the double bass part, but elsewhere original piano accompaniments have been rescored to include strings.