Fanny & Felix Mendelssohn: Piano Sextet, Piano Quartet, Piano Trio

Album review

The still relatively new and wholly flexible Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective continues its rigorous schedule with an album of rarely heard chamber works by Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn. Collective co-founder and pianist Tom Poster is the main attraction in Felix's Piano Sextet, Op. 110, from 1824. The piano is heavily featured here, leaving many to consider this work a chamber concerto, with the strings, including a bass and doubled viola rather than violin, in an almost accompaniment role. While the Sextet is a rarity among Felix's oeuvre, what will likely draw many listeners to this album -- besides the growing reputation of the Collective and its members -- are the two works from Fanny. Her Piano Trio in D minor, Op. 11, was written between 1846 and 1847 and was not published or performed until after her untimely death at age 41. The performance offered here by Poster, with Collective co-founder and violinist Elena Urioste and rising star cellist Laura van der Heijden, is precise and exciting, especially in the energetic Allegro molto vivace first movement. While the Trio displays the full maturity of style and the culmination of Fanny's compositional life, the Piano Quartet in A flat major is an early attempt at chamber music writing from Fanny that would eventually be left unfinished. Possibly written as an attempt at equaling the piano quartets her younger brother Felix was writing at that time, it is a rather unremarkable work, with flashes of ingenuity, especially in the piano part, but leaving little wonder as to why it is not more common. However, the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective, with violist Rosalind Ventris joining the musicians for the Trio (Ventris also appears on the Sextet), offers a quality performance worthy of a listen. Chandos delivers ideal sound from Potton Hall in Suffolk for all three ensemble combinations.
© Keith Finke /TiVo