Brahms and Contemporaries Volume 2
Louise Héritte-Viardot (1841-1918)
Piano Quartet No. 1, in A major, Op. 9 Im Sommer (1883)
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Piano Quartet No. 3 in C minor, Op. 60 (1855-75)
Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective
rec. 2024, Potton Hall, Dunwich, UK
Chandos CHAN20329 [59]

Volume 2 of the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective’s fascinating ‘Brahms and Contemporaries’ series offers the chance to hear another pairing of piano quartets. Here Brahms’s Third is alongside the First of Louise Héritte-Viardot. As with the Volume 1, which featured Luise Adolpha Le Beau (CHAN20297), the juxtaposition is instructive.   

Actually, in Volume 2 the comparison is not just instructive but shocking. Here is Brahms in 1875 writing to his publisher Fritz Simrock with an idea for the presentation of the score of the Piano Quartet No. 3: ‘…on the cover you must have a picture, namely a head – with a pistol pointed towards it…For this purpose I will send you my photograph!’ Over twenty years after Brahms’s first meeting with the Schumanns then, he is casting himself here in the role of Goethe’s Werther who commits suicide when his love for Charlotte proves unrequited. You do not need to be much of a musicologist or historian to identify that Brahms’s Charlotte was Clara Schumann, those early feelings of his being poured into a three movement piano quartet in C sharp minor in 1856, whose slow movement Clara loved. But as his letter to Simrock shows, this was still in the forefront of his mind in the eventual final version of the piece, now in four movements and cast in C minor, and unlike some of his other compositions in that key (e.g. the Symphony No 1 and the Alto Rhapsody) not definitively ending in a triumphant tonic major.   

Being aware of Brahms’s apparent state of mind in the Third Piano Quartet still doesn’t prepare one for the impact of the music, which is disquieting in its intensity, particularly when given such a committed and lustrous performance as here. The Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective launch us, in media res, into an impassioned account of the first movement, ‘Clara’ themes and all, where for the first three quarters of its length they seem to find new reserves of power when one thinks there couldn’t possibly be any more notches on the dial, only to almost disintegrate at the end, the coda here acquiring a bitter timbral and spiritual quality. The second movement Scherzo is dynamic and thrilling, ferocious in places in the hands of these players. Beautiful, rapt, string playing marks the Andante, Laura van der Heijden’s cello and Elena Urioste’s violin perfectly matched. Urioste is also magnificent in her handling of the solo violin melody at the start of the Finale, with Tom Poster’s piano combining perfectly with a sort of moto perpetuo theme. When the other players join, the movement builds towards a superbly projected chorale before the tonally ambiguous conclusion.

Héritte-Viardot’s Piano Quartet No. 1 decisively shows there are other valid approaches to the form. Singer, pianist, conductor and composer of over 300 works, Héritte-Viardot knew both Clara and Brahms, and her mother Pauline, was the soloist in the premiere of the Alto Rhapsody. Like Brahms, she wrote three piano quartets.  Listening to her Piano Quartet No 1, I would have definitely thought of Brahms (and also Dvořák) if I had listened to it in isolation. Heard alongside the Brahms though, what is striking is Héritte-Viardot’s subtlety. Whatever influences she may have absorbed, she is an original. I don’t mean so much her use of a programme here per se, more the striking precision in her writing and her ability to shape the medium so effectively. Each of the four movements, spanning a summer’s day from morning until evening, is an exercise in invention and variety but also absolutely identifiably part of a larger whole. The writing is precisely calibrated, but that’s invisible to the listener, so it’s not until you pick up the score or just the booklet notes and see the detailed tempo changes and performance directions that you realise how much Héritte-Viardot took care to try and transcribe exactly what was in her head to the manuscript. It comes alive thrillingly and upliftingly in this performance with the performers paying so much attention to dynamics, balance and characterisation. We can visualise light shimmering through the branches of trees in the first movement in Kaleidoscope’s poised realisation and feel utter delight at their striking evocation of flies and butterflies in the second. The slow movement which follows, entitled Die Schwüle (‘Sultriness’) begins with gorgeous cello playing from van der Heijden and then unfolds in a dreamlike dynamic. The finale is given an appropriately rustic feel at the start and as the heading of the movement indicates, a Peasant Dance eventually manifests, here rendered with playing which has real snap and sharpness. This work is a joy, no one-off curiosity. It’s also a tonic to the mood cast by the Brahms!

Thinking about how well these two pieces worked together took me back to the comments of the performers in their booklet notes. They say there that one purpose of the series is to investigate ‘Brahms’s unjustly overlooked contemporaries’. I would say their choices so far have been revelatory. But what is also striking is how exciting a recital it makes. In placing Brahms in the company of another composer it’s not only the less well known who benefits from such a pairing.  

So, excellently conceived, perfectly executed, the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective have produced what is for me one of the most memorable chamber albums of the year so far. The first class recorded sound meets the usual high standards set by Chandos and I enjoyed Nicholas Marston’s excellent booklet notes. Roll on Volume 3.

Dominic Hartley

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