Lammermuir Festival: Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective I
North Esk Church, Musselburgh - 11/09/23
North Esk Church in Musselburgh hosted a marvellously eclectic programme delivered by members of the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective (misspelt on the programme) on the afternoon of Monday 11th September. Of the 9 fine musicians appearing during the recital, two were known to me already. Violinist Elena Urioste is well known as a champion of the music of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and her performance of his Violin Concerto with NYOS and Martyn Brabbins in Perth in mid-July, which I reviewed, was a highlight of the summer. Cellist Laura van der Heijden’ is no stranger to Scottish audiences either, most recently premiering Cheryl Frances-Head’s Cello Concerto with the BBCSSO, having earlier in the year given Shostakovich’s less-frequently performed 2nd Concerto a memorable outing with the SCO.
Mozart’s Quartet for Bassoon and Strings K292 is an ingenious Ian Farrington transcription of a sonata for bassoon and cello, probably earlier than the K-number suggests. It is a cheery work in concertante style with a starring role for the bassoon. A sonata-form first movement, a romance slow movement and a rondo finale – conventional perhaps but very lovely. Elena and Laura were joined by bassoonist Amy Harman and violist Rosalind Ventris.
Dohnányi’s 1935 Sextet, scored for string trio as above, plus clarinet (Matthew Hunt), horn (Ben Goldscheider) and piano (Director of the Collective, Tom Poster), is a beefy 4-movement late romantic work, Brahmsian in scope but I was reminded very frequently of the sound world of Korngold. Sadly, tainted by association with the Third Reich, music with any trace of schmaltz or Gemütlichkeit was regarded with suspicion at best and consigned to oblivion, condemning the world for decades to the (rant alert) dreary output of the Darmstadt School. Dohnányi himself was unjustly smeared with false accusations of Nazi sympathies. Rant over. The Sextet is an absolute gem. A stormy turbulent first movement felt very symphonic, despite the chamber forces. The slow movement, a dreamy romance interrupted twice by an ominous march. The third movement felt like a theme and variations, quite Brahmsian in feel, one variation very like the scherzo of Brahms’ Horn Trio. The finale, witty and rhythmic with a driven dance, also features a big romantic tune and a soupy waltz that keep interrupting each other. The big tune makes a reappearance in the wrong key before the hilarity is emphatically halted with a final cadence. What a hoot and a romp!
August Klughardt’s ‘Schilflieder’ (Songs of the Reedbeds) comprise 5 atmospheric instrumental pieces for oboe, viola and piano, evocative of the melancholy of the lovelorn seeking solitude in the wild wetlands, of which 3 were performed. Armand Djikaloum was the oboist. Well worth the candle.
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Nonet, the ninth instrument being the double bass played by Ruohua Li, concluded the programme. Often redolent of Brahms and Dvořák, Coleridge-Taylor’s voice is nonetheless an individual one, even in his teens when the nonet was written. The music was very lovely, but the thrill was the chamber music, the smiles, the eye contact between the players, the mutually responsive phrasing, the little moments of dialogue playing out before our eyes. There was about the music an unpretentious directness and an element of delight in discovery as perhaps only a young composer can experience. It was all pretty excellent, but the absolute highlight was the scurrying pizzicato dialogue in the scherzo, which alone is enough to make me covet a recording (hint: the Collective have recorded it). Superb.
There being a dearth of pieces for the precise nonet combination, the encore was their own arrangement of Gershwin’s “They can’t take that away from me”. Scrumptious.