Anne Sofie von Otter, mezzo/Bengt Forsberg, piano

Songs by Meyerbeer, Rangstrom, Soderman, Schubert, Mahler and Bizet

The Belfast Festival brochure describes this concert as "undoubtedly the jewel in the crown of the 1998 music programme". Comparisons with other performers would hardly be fair to anyone concerned, but this was a distinguished event by any standard.

Anne Sofie von Otter is blessed with a voice of richness and warmth, and she uses it with great charm and discrimination - and to be honest, the slighter pieces, the Meyerbeer and Bizet songs, for instance, need all the charm they can get. Changes in the programme meant that we weren't able to follow the texts and translations of the Swedish items, but with such vivid characterisation one hardly needed to know the literal sense.

Bengt Forsberg conjured a comparable beguiling manner and warmth of sound from the piano. He excelled in the busy accompaniment to Schubert's Waldesnacht, but couldn't quite persuade one that Mahler's Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen works as well on the piano as in the familiar orchestral version. However, it was here that Otter was at her most memorable, spinning a fine thread of silken tone at the end of the second and fourth songs, declaiming the third proudly.

There were two encores: another Swedish song by Wilhelm Petterson-Berger and a particularly effective French lullaby from Reynaldo Hahn.