Cornell's newly acquired 1868 Érard piano will be inaugurated in Barnes Hall tonight, March 28, in a concert featuring Cornell pianist Xak Bjerken, Ithaca College clarinetist Richard Faria and the Kaleidos Ensemble from Amsterdam (Emi Ohi Resnick; violin; Giles Francis, viola; Matthias Naegele, cello). The concert is free and open to the public.
Sponsored, in part, by the Cornell Council for the Arts, the program opens with Robert Schumann's Fairy Tales, op. 132, for clarinet, viola and piano. Antonín Dvorák's Trio in F Minor, op. 65, will be presented by pianist Bjerken, violinist Resnick and cellist Naegele, and the Quartet No. 1 in C Minor for piano and strings by Gabriel Fauré closes the concert.
The center of attention is a piano recently acquired by Cornell: an 1868 Érard piano. Son of a cabinetmaker, Sébastien Érard was apprenticed to a Paris harpsichord maker in 1768. In 1777 he made the first French piano and in 1780, with his brother, began to manufacture pianos. Érard even spent time in London, learning English methods and opening a branch there, and in 1796 made his first French grand piano in the English style. Through his inventiveness, the improvements in piano design made the Érard firm one of the most successful in Europe; in fact, the Érard action was the basis for today's Steinway piano design.
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