The Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective plays Mendelssohn

The Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective will release a new album of chamber works by siblings Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn, out on Friday 29 July.

The album will consist of Fanny’s rarely heard Piano Quartet and Piano Trio, as well as the Piano Sextet by her brother Felix.

Fanny Mendelssohn composed her Piano Quartet while a student, aged 17. In contrast, the Piano Trio was her last chamber work, written in her final year. She died of a stroke in 1847 at the age of 42.

The Piano Sextet by Felix Mendelssohn was also an early work, written in just a few short weeks in the spring of 1824. He never published the work during his lifetime, perhaps due to the work’s unusual instrumentation. The work was published posthumously as op.110 in 1868, over 20 years after his death.

The Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective was formed in 2017 by violinist Elena Urioste and pianist Tom Poster. The flexible ensemble aims to prioritise creative programming, ‘making sure that we were playing people whose music deserved to be heard more than once,’ explained Urioste in a recent interview with The Strad.

The ensemble will perform Fanny Mendelssohn’s Piano Quartet live at Cowbridge Music Festival on Saturday 17 September at 7pm. More information can be found here.

Recorded at Potton Hall, Suffolk, November 2021. Produced by Jonathan Cooper. Engineer Assistant Alex James. Video shot by Alex James and Ashleagh Hurren. Edited by Ashleagh Hurren.