A concert consisting entirely of French song in the mezzo soprano range was something of a departure from the norm for Véronique Gens, a singer who has made her name as an interpreter of Baroque music and a Mozart soprano. The fiery nobility she brings to Mozart's Fiordiligi was left at home during this concert, in favour of a more relaxed delivery. Her programme was attractive but not very varied, and at times one longed for some good old soprano neurosis to break through all the languid Gallic sensuality.

Two songs from Berlioz's cycle Les Nuits d'été set the mood from the start. Gens sang with a clear, simple and lovely tone, free from affectation. Accompanying, Roger Vignoles was sensitive and responsive, playing with a deftness and lightness of touch that was an apt support to the long, sustained vocal lines. It didn't always seem easy for Gens to pass from mid-range to the high notes, but when she stayed in her higher range for more than a moment, as she did in Le Spectre de la Rose, the resulting phrase was full of richness and tantalisingly brief.

Fauré's earliest published work, Le Papillon et le Fleur, revealed that when the composer was a student he had already pinned down the gift for charming and evocative lyricism, which Gens amply conveyed in four of his other settings.

Four songs by Reynaldo Hahn (a French composer born in Venezuela in 1875) were more varied. Trois Jours de Vendange introduced a note of tragedy, while A Chloris owed more than a little debt to the Baroque airs of Handel and JS Bach.

Book I of Debussy's F tes Galantes and his Chansons de Bilitis raised Vignoles's role to that of duet partner. Gens was still communicative and natural but, as earlier, showed a tendency to let her tone slacken at the end of phrases, and her dynamic range remained largely unexplored.

She was more animated in Poulenc's Banalités, a cycle of sharply-observed settings of poetry by Apollinaire. The fast, almost schmaltzy waltz that is Voyage à Paris was sung with a broad smile, yet the next song, Sanglots (Sobs), was as intense and dark as its title suggests.

This programme explored one side of Gens's performing persona very thoroughly, yet she can do much more. It was a nice touch to throw in Purcell's Fairest Isle as an encore, a tribute to a British audience. A little more of such variety earlier on would have better highlighted her considerable skill.