From Beethoven, Mozart and Brahms through to Elliott Carter, Iannis Xenakis and Morton Feldman, the repertoire for violin and piano is rich and varied. The acoustic rub of the two instruments together, though, has always struck me as problematic: the equal temperament of a piano against the more nuanced tuning of a violin can be like serving egg fried rice with chicken madras Whether Mandhira De Saram and Benoît Delbecq set out to address this issue intentionally isn’t specified – there are no notes at all as part of Confront’s minimalist packaging – but Delbecq’s decision to prepare the inside of his piano upends the clean-cut tuning of his instrument, giving both musicians plenty to chew on. There are three pieces – a short prologue and two 30-minute tracks – and not everything works well. Especially during the middle piece, ‘Lace Weaver’, drone-like textures are ruminated over for longer than the material warrants. But there is much to savour elsewhere, especially De Saram’s knack of constructing extended melodic utterances out of tiny melodic cells, as Delbecq gently colours underneath.