Four Hands at the Érard | Adelaide Festival 2022 review

The program consisted of lighthearted 19th century French piano duets – what might have once been called drawing-room music.

Four Hands at the Érard – Resonance: Chamber Landscapes. Stephanie McCallum and Erin Helyard. Picture: Tony Lewis, supplied

Four Hands at the Érard – Resonance: Chamber Landscapes

Classical Music

ADELAIDE FESTIVAL

UKARIA Cultural Centre

March 13

It is right that Erin Helyard, Resonance’s hardworking curator, should be able to relax a little – and this was the occasion.

Demonstrating his pride and joy, an 1853 straight strung Érard grand piano, brought in by Helyard specially for the occasion, and joined by distinguished pianist and Alkan scholar Stephanie McCallum, listeners and performers alike had great fun.

The program consisted of lighthearted 19th century French piano duets in the genre of what might have been called drawing-room music, back in the day.

Four Hands at the Érard – Resonance: Chamber Landscapes. Erin Helyard and Stephanie McCallum. Picture: Tony Lewis, supplied

Debussy’s Petite Suite is of course more than a cut above what grandma kept in the piano stool, but it is still full of charm, wit and theatrical delicacies that Helyard and McCallum grasped with gleeful abandon, extracting every last drop of Gallic felicity.

Gabriel Fauré hides behind historical pastiches in his Masques et Bergamasques, written in classical and baroque styles, until he unmasks himself with full chromaticism and lush harmonies in the final Pastorale, a wonderful joke.

Another drawing-room class act was a selection of Chaminade’s 6 Pièces romantiques. One of only a few women composers in that era who was well known during her lifetime, she couldn’t help writing good tunes, seemingly effortlessly throughout these pieces.

The elephant in the room was Alkan’s Salterella from his Sonata de concert, fiendishly difficult and totally characteristic of this mad hatter among composers. The Érard withstood these various assaults valiantly and was a worthy contributor to all the jollity.