French to their fingertips

a review by Julia Meredith

More cultural exchange, s’il vous plait !
Zoe Gosset, coloratura soprano, and pianist Sarah Margaine, our Belles de Nuit, brought France to St James last week. Passionate, charming and phenomenally talented, they wafted over the Channel bearing a particular scent – night-flowering jasmine with a touch of musk, perhaps? – which seemed to get every molecule of air in that elegant hall dancing to their tune.
I hadn’t realised, but their programme was a part of Les Fieffe’s Musiciens, the annual Festival de Musique de Chambre en Cotentin. As an initiative in entente cordiale, it could not have marked more perfectly our link with our Gallic neighbour, at the same time as the launch here of a centre to celebrate Victor Hugo’s 15 year sojourn in Guernsey. (As it happened, the Queen had visited Hugo’s residence in St Peter Port, Hauteville House, the previous day, so we were feeling particularly excited by our illustrious visitors over the years!)
Back in St James, the buzz of a full hall stilled as Zoe and Sarah sparkled their way on stage. For a programme that embraced everything from Jazz, to Opera, cabaret to the classics, one needs charisma besides sheer musicianship; and from the outset it was clear we’d not be disappointed.
Albert Roussel’s Jazz dans la nuit gave us the first taste of Zoe’s breathtaking coluratura soprano. Supple, true and apparently effortless, it negotiated a complex melody with grace and fluency – matched, like a perfect dancing partner, by Sarah Margaine on the piano.
In the three Debussy songs which followed – Apparition, Chevaux de bois and Nuit d’etoiles showed us the operatic power of Zoe’s voice. She filled the space with a vibrant energy which brought more to the songs than just crisp enunciation and acrobatic agility in moving across the ranges … what made her performance irresistible was the wholehearted expressiveness she put into each phrase, each song. My regret that my schoolgirl French was not up to understanding every word was somewhat mitigated by her mercurial talent to communicate with every fibre: the message was explicit in her eyes, her hands, her entire posture.
It was now Sarah’s chance to move to centre stage. In Ravel’s Alborada del gracioso for solo piano it was clear that her talent as a soloist is equal to that as an empathetic accompanist. This is an atmospheric work, moving between exuberance and introspection. Sarah brought spirited attack and colour to the carnival-like passages, easing into shimmering delicacy for the more languid moments. It was a vivid and subtle performance.
Zoe returned with a beguiling duo of songs by Delibes: Les Filles de Cadiz, and the exquisite Bell Song from Lakme. The latter has almost become a musical cliche from associations we would rather forget; it now has to offer a very special performance to
pierce our ennui and restore its lustre. For me, this was where the magic happened… Zoe’s emotional commitment, elastic fluidity in shaping the melody and personal warmth captured us all, I believe. And that voice! You can easily imagine her scaling the heights needed for the Queen of the Night in The Magic Flute as she did earlier at the Theatre Royal in Brussels. Most dazzling of all was her floating up into an unaccompanied cadenza, and when rejoined by the piano, she was still pitch-perfect. All singers in the audience were consumed with awe, envy and admiration.
After interval, a switch of styles demonstrated this duo’s great versatility. La Perichole is a comic operetta (‘Bouffe’) from Offenbach, part of whose convoluted plot involves the marvellously maudlin Griserie aria from a heroine rather the worse for wear. It showed us Zoe as a comedienne of wit and confidence, catching all the confiding stream-of-consciousness of the uninhibitedly tipsy. It was a magnificent vision of a ‘tired and emotional’ outpouring that was both very funny and rather touching – and throughout the dizzily emphatic delivery, her tunefulness was spot on.
Contrasting again, Satie’s Gnossienne no.3 for solo piano brought the mood from extrovert theatrics to subtle introversion. Sarah made the sparse notes sing out into the void – alienated, but beautiful.
Zoe returned for Ravel’s Fire Aria from L’enfant et les sortileges, showing how a voice of that calibre can carry as much threat as promise – it’s a caress, a weapon, an irresistible imposition of will.
Such fervency can soothe, as well as command, however. The delicious glistening of a rain-scented garden was conjured up in her rendering of Albert Roussel’s Jardin Mouille , and the audience inhaled with simple pleasure.
That sweet sensuality flowed into the last piece on the programme, Louis Beydts’ Chansons pour les oiseaux; charming, airy songs for the birds . Zoe lives the story she sings – so much feeling is conveyed beyond just her voice. I wondered whether it might be precisely because I didn’t understand the nuances of the lyrics that I was so affected by her expressiveness. She lives so intensely through her narrative it becomes as real to us as it is to her.

Heartfelt thanks to The Swallow 2018 Charitable Trust, for treating us to such a captivating evening of joie de vivre.
Julia Meredith 22nd July 2024