New Coleridge-Taylor Album from Kaleidoscope

courtesy of WeTransfer

Today the British Chandos label released a new album of performances by the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective. Roughly a year ago, this ensemble released an album entitled American Quintets, showcasing works by American composers Amy Beach, Florence Price, and Samuel Barber. The new album shifts attention to England and focuses on only a single composer, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. Readers may recall that the Catalyst Quartet released its own Coleridge-Taylor album in February of last year, but Kaleidoscope’s resources extend significantly beyond the Catalyst repertoire.

The one selection that Kaleidoscope shares with Catalyst is Coleridge-Taylor’s Opus 1 piano quintet in G minor. However, there has been a minor change in quintet players since the release of American Quintets. Elena Urioste is still one of the two violinists; but the other is now Savitri Grier, replacing Melissa White. The remainder of the quintet still consists of violist Rosalind Ventris, cellist Laura van der Heijden, and pianist Tom Poster.

Like Catalyst, the Kaleidoscope players are not shy about convincing the attentive listener that the Opus 1 quintet shows clear signs of influence by the chamber music of Antonín Dvořák. However, those signs of influence include a vigorous account of the rhetorical diversity across the quintet’s four movements. Opus 1 is the “bookend” that concludes this new album.

Curiously, the “bookend” at the beginning is Coleridge-Taylor’s Opus 2. This is a nonet with the title “Gradus ad Parnassum.” A piano quartet of Urioste, Ventris, van der Heijden, and Poster is extended with four wind players, Armand Djikoloum on oboe, Matthew Hunt on clarinet, Amy Harman on bassoon, and Ben Goldscheider on horn, as well as Xavier Foley on bass. The instrumentation alone distances this composition further from Dvořák than Opus 1 does. Nevertheless, the attentive listener will probably not have too much difficulty identifying at least some of the Dvořák tropes that surface over the course of this nonet’s four movements.

It would also be fair to say that, where the more general nature of development is concerned, both of these compositions show a dutiful nod to Dvořák. Between these two works, however, is a significantly shorter three-movement piano trio. Grier is the violinist for this selection. Ironically, all three of the works on this album seem to have been composed on or about the year 1893. However, the trio was not given an opus number, suggesting that Coleridge-Taylor may have viewed it as an exercise. Nevertheless, this is the selection that tends to steer away from Dvořák, the only signs of influence surfacing in the final Allegro con furiant movement.

In spite of the trio’s modest scale, there is more than enough to engage the attentive listener on this new album; and the imaginative instrumentation of Opus 2 definitely makes this a “must listen” offering.