Transfigured

Known for its championship of neglected repertoire, the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective presents a programme of works by members of the Second Viennese School, based around Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht. Probably Schoenberg's best-known piece - in either of its two orchestral versions or the original string sextet version heard here, Verklärte Nacht is certainly not neglected! The Collective has chosen to surround it, however, with works that are much less well known, producing a fascinating and rewarding programme. Schoenberg composed the work in 1899, whilst on holiday with his friend and fellow composer Alexander Zemlinsky and Zemlinsky's sister, Mathilde, whom Schoenberg would marry two years later. Zemlinsky's Maiblumen blühten überall, for soprano and string sextet, was never completed, intended originally to be a much larger work. Webern studied composition with both Zemlinsky and Schoenberg. His Piano Quintet may, like Zemlinsky's composition, have been conceived a part of a larger work, but only this one movement was ever composed. Alma Schindler was another pupil of Zemlinsky, one with whom he developed a deep romantic infatuation. Their relationship ended when she herself fell in love with Gustav Mahler who, when they married, famously forbade her from pursuing her career as a composer. The four songs included here (arranged for soprano and string sextet by Tom Poster) are embedded in the soundworld of Zemlinsky and Schoenberg, and offer an intriguing glimpse of what she might have composed in other circumstances.