Presto Recording of the Week
29th July 2022

Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective

Mendelssohn: Piano Sextet Op. 110
Mendelssohn, Fanny: Piano Trio in D minor Op. 11
Mendelssohn, Fanny: Piano Quartet in A flat major

Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, born four years before her brother, Felix Mendelssohn, was an accomplished pianist and a prolific composer. When she died of a stroke, aged just forty-two, she left around 460 pieces of music, some 250 of which are songs. The difficulties of making a career in her own era (her supportive father would not allow her to publish or work as a ‘professional’ composer) have condemned much of her work to obscurity, a situation that is now rapidly being reversed as the number of concerts and recordings devoted to works by women composers increases.

Here the award-winning Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective champions her Piano Trio and Piano Quartet, alongside Felix Mendelssohn’s underperformed Piano Sextet. Fanny composed her Piano Quartet whilst a student, aged seventeen. In contrast, the Piano Trio was her last chamber work, written in her final year. The Piano Sextet by Felix Mendelssohn was also an early work, written in just a few short weeks in the spring of 1824. For some reason he never published the work (perhaps because of the unusual scoring), hence it became his Op.110 when published, posthumously, in 1868.

"The Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective continue to go from strength to strength. Their explorations of neglected repertoire from marginalised groups are not merely a much-needed contribution to the redressing of imbalances in familiarity and reputation – though they are certainly that – but they are also, quite simply, brilliant music-making." - David Smith, Presto Music, 29th July 2022.