Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective: Transfigured
Chandos Records

On three earlier albums, Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective performed music by Amy Beach, Florence Price, Samuel Barber, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, and the Mendelssohns, Felix and Fanny. Its fourth shifts the focus to fin-de-siècle Vienna, with Schoenberg's enduring Verklärte Nacht (hence the album title) coupled with less familiar works by Anton Webern, Alexander Zemlinsky, and, in perhaps the biggest surprise, Alma Mahler. It might be a stretch to call the material by Gustav's wife a revelation, but the four songs are of such disarmingly high quality one can't help but wonder what kind of composing career she might have had if circumstances had been different. Deciding to include her material was a particularly inspired move, but the hour-long release has much to recommend it otherwise. Certainly the emotionally expressive character of Webern's 1907 Quintet is striking too when it's so unlike the twelve-tone material for which he's known.

With four albums and multiple concert dates under its belt, Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective has accomplished much since its 2017 founding by pianist Tom Poster and violinist Elena Urioste. On this new set, the two perform alongside violinist Grace Park, violists Juan-Miguel Hernandez and Kyle Armbrust, cellists Laura van der Heijden and Tony Rymer, and on the Zemlinsky and Mahler pieces soprano Francesca Chiejina. The eight illuminate all four composers' works and bring vividly to life the excitement of a remarkably fertile musical period that saw the nineteenth century give way to the tumultuous innovations of the twentieth.

Scored for soprano and string sextet, Maiblumen blühten überall by Zemlinsky—Schoenberg's brother-in-law—makes for a superb entry-point. Set to verse by Richard Dehmel and, though written a century earlier, first published in 1997, the 201-bar work heard today is incomplete and offers thus a tantalizing glimpse of how the full work might sound. In this case, then, the text recounts only part of the story, though passion and tragedy are still present in the fact that an agricultural labourer, described with intense affection by a local girl, dies in a cornfield. Strings sensuously set the tone, the writing instantly redolent of the era and the setting aromatically evoked. Plaintive expressions of yearning suggest comparisons between Zemlinsky's piece and Verklärte Nacht might be proposed, but the entrance of Chiejina's authoritative voice two minutes into the performance puts automatic distance between the works. At nine minutes, Maiblumen blühten überall is over quickly, but it's long enough for the intensity of its expression to register.

Webern's Quintet exudes melodic warmth and a Brahmsian character, but there's also angst aplenty. As Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective advances through its thirteen-minute rendering, the material alternates between passages of serenity and turmoil, the variegated terrain emblematic of emotional disruption and instability. Hushed, tremolo-laden strings shudder amidst ghostly piano figures in this oft-spectral enactment, the piece again sounding like a natural companion to Verklärte Nacht.

Critical interpersonal undercurrents connect many pieces. Alma Schindler met Gustav Mahler at a 1901 dinner party and married him a year later. Unfortunately, he insisted that she surrender her musical ambitions, an especially sad demand given the promise she had shown as a student of Zemlinsky's and Schoenberg's teacher Josef Labor. Only fourteen lyrical songs by her survive, of which four are performed by Chiejina and Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective in arrangements by Poster. The first three of the songs come from the 1910-issued Fünf Lieder, while the fourth is from Vier Lieder (1915). As stated by Gavin Plumley in liner notes, the songs, the writing of which predate the Mahlers' marriage, are marked by a chromaticism that “demonstrates more affinity with Schoenberg and Zemlinsky than it does any association with her future husband.” Even so, at least one moment arises that evokes Gustav's writing (the repeating two-note string figure that introduces the radiant “Bei dir ist es traut”) and most striking of all is a passage (the wordless vocal line that appears at the four-minute mark) in “Erntelied” that anticipates Richard Strauss's Four Last Songs. Set to words by Dehmel, “Die stille Stadt” serves immediate notice of Alma's redoubtable gifts when Chiejina gloriously soars across the strings' supple foundation, and the ensemble's sublime rendering of “Laue Sommernacht” speak as eloquently on the composer's behalf.

Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht (1899) receives a suitably haunting reading by the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective, the work presented in its original sextet version rather than the string orchestra arrangement the composer subsequently produced. Inspired by a Dehmel poem, the work is instrumental, of course, yet its trajectory nonetheless mirrors the narrative of the text: walking through “a leafless frosty copse,” a man learns from his companion that she's bearing a child, one not his. Rather than repudiating and abandoning her, he instead embraces her, telling her he will accept the baby as if it's his own. While echoes of Wagner emerge, the work bears Schoenberg's stylistic signature in the period preceding his twelve-tone turn. Agitated sections that strain against harmonic convention foreshadow that development, but they're so seamlessly woven into the fabric they come across as emphatic emotional outpourings rather than radical signposts of the revolutionary works to come. Memorable motifs lend form and unity to the work too as it progresses through its numerous stages, some brooding, others supplicating, filled with pathos, and charged with longing. Many recordings of the work are available, of course, but the one by Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective shows such attention to detail and mood and is so abundant in expressive feeling and nuance, it earns a rightful place alongside others.

September 2023