Music / Exquisite Harmonies, The Marais Project. Greenaway Studio, Chapman, March 16. Reviewed by SARAH BYRNE.

The Marais Project is the year 2000 brainchild of viola da gamba virtuoso Jennifer Eriksson, named after the great French composer Marin Marais, who wrote prolifically for that instrument, and whose works have been at least as prolifically performed by the Project.

To date the ensemble has released nine recordings and performed at least 85 per cent of the composer’s oeuvre, though lately distracted a bit, George RR Martin style, by forays into other composers for period instruments.

For this aptly named concert, Eriksson was joined by harpsichordist Anthony Abouhamad in the bijou setting of Sally Greenaway’s private studio in Chapman.

This was my first time in this venue and I was completely charmed. Fifty or 60 folding chairs with cushions are set out in a lovely room with vaulted ceilings for a comfortably intimate musical experience, followed by a positively Trimalchian feast in their beautiful garden (for which I was, alas, unable to stay).

Sally and her husband Peter went out of their way to accommodate my mobility-impaired elderly mother, and the whole effect was one of genuine camaraderie amongst performers and audience (complete with badinage).

Like the salon itself, the selected pieces were small, carefully curated and perfectly formed. Pieces by Telemann (and one clever Fantasia by Abouhamad himself in the Telemann style), Abel, Couperin and Marais (of course) were the order of the day, all elegant baroquerie, with Eriksson’s trills and mordents a particular highlight.

The program culminated in the fiendish Suite No 2 in G Major for viol da gamba, by Forqueray, Marais’ successor and infamously the “devil” to Marais’ “angel”. I was seated so closely to the harpsichord I could read the manuscript, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many notes on a page. The result was a credit to the performers.

For a change of pace, as a well-deserved encore, Eriksson gave us her own composition, a much more modern short piece entitled Song for my Father. He would have been proud.

This was a thoroughly enjoyable way to experience this music, the performers charming and self-deprecating, and truly engaged with their audience in a way not possible in larger venues.