Transfigured Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht; Webern: Quintet for strings and piano; Zemlinsky: Maiblumen blüthen überall; A Mahler: Die stille Stadt; Erntlied; Laue Sommernacht Francesca Chiejina (soprano); Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective Chandos CHAN20277 62:26 mins
‘Kaleidoscope’ is a canny name for this chamber-music collective with its flexible line-up, and also for its imaginative approach to programming. If you’re looking to record Schoenberg’s string sextet Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night), what do you present alongside it which will involve the additional viola and cello players besides the string quartet’s standard foursome? As it turns out, Alexander Zemlinsky’s Maiblumen blühten überall (Lilies-of-the-valley blossomed everywhere) was written for the same ensemble, plus a soprano to sing the text by Richard Dehmel (another of whose poems inspired Verklärte Nacht). Extending this late-Romantic Viennese theme are Webern’s single-movement Piano Quintet, plus four songs by the young Alma Mahler; these are given string-sextet accompaniments, arranged with much skill by Kaleidoscope pianist Tom Poster.
Such an excellently devised programme still needs playing to match, and an eyebrow or two can be raised about this. Ensemble and tuning are superlative. But there’s also a tendency in places to a thrusting and unconvincing loudness – in genuine pursuit of the music’s expressive vehemence, maybe, but that isn’t the same thing (and a generally rather-too-close recorded balance doesn’t help). The situation is at its least troubling in Verklärte Nacht, whose wondrous loveliness and intensity are beautifully conveyed (once the excessive non vibrato in the opening bars is out of the way). Francesco Chiejina’s lustrous soprano brings serious class to Zemlinsky’s Dehmel setting, and also to Alma Mahler’s songs; these reveal a natural and remarkable composing talent, about to be suppressed by marriage to her famous husband.
Malcolm Hayes