Rencontre

Early 20th-century French song is flavoured with the most delicious, exotic harmonies—whether it be Ravel’s portrait of the perfumed East or Debussy’s description of a broken heart, complete with sighing vocal lines and rippling chords for falling tears. This is a beautifully balanced programme, both in terms of repertoire and the blend of Camarinha’s velvet soprano and Héreau’s fleet-fingered pianism. The less familiar composer Maurice Delage wafts us to an idealised India and there’s room, too, for some bittersweet Poulenc: “Dans l’herbe” is both beautiful and tragic in its hymnlike simplicity.