Julie Roset & Susan Manoff, EIF music review: 'vibrant'
Up-and-coming young soprano Julie Roset delivered a charming EIF performance alongside pianist Susan Manoff, writes Carol Main.
Julie Roset & Susan Manoff ★★★★
Queen’s Hall
Doing things that really shouldn’t be possible for singers at 11 o’clock in the morning, young French soprano Julie Roset showed off her bright, light soprano voice in a charmingly melodic programme of songs all in her native language.
Still not quite age 30, Roset is already making a name for herself with some of the coloratura vocal gymnastics heard at the Queen’s Hall yesterday, as well as the way she can float the upper register of the voice as if suspended in mid-air.
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Instinctively shaped legato lines of Debussy, Boulanger and Rosenthal spoke of love and romance, with unrequited love being treated more unusually in the contemporary composer Isabelle Aboulker’s Je t’aime, where not being wanted by her lover produced some stratospherically high results in its top Cs.
It’s a brave pianist who performs such a well-known piece as Debussy’s La fille aux cheveux de lin as one of only two solos in a song recital. Susan Manoff did so in her own style, affectionately questioning in the prelude’s lyrical simplicity.
As pianist for Roset, the instrumental tone wasn’t quite the right match, being more rounded and softer in comparison to the vibrant sparkle of the voice. Carol Main
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