Great Performers: Miriam Allan & Erin Helyard

Miriam Allan is one of the world’s leading sopranos. Her tonal beauty and breathtaking technique have been enjoyed across the world. Eminently suited to the chamber format, Miriam’s voice is light, clear and delivered with a groundswell of emotional depth.

Melbourne Recital Centre’s 2022 Artist in Residence and Artistic Director of Pinchgut Opera Erin Helyard is acclaimed as an inspiring conductor and a virtuosic and expressive performer of the harpsichord and fortepiano. He is passionate about music of the past and the discourse between musicology and performance.

Their performance in Elisabeth Murdoch Hall for Melbourne Recital Centre’s Great Performers series takes audiences from Haydn’s triumphs in London to Schubert’s crowning as the ‘Prince of Song’ in Vienna. Haydn, Mozart, Josepha Auernhammer, and Schubert were all weavers of song. For them, lyricism was the foundation of their art. Mozart once commented to a singer friend that ‘melody is the essence of music’ and nowhere is this more evident than in the lieder and piano works of Schubert, the songs of Haydn, and the keyboard works of Mozart and his talented protégé Josepha Auernhammer.