American Quintets Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective

• Amy Beach (1867 - 1944): Piano Quintet in F-Sharp Minor, Op. 67:
• 1 Beach: Piano Quintet in F-Sharp Minor, Op. 67: I. Adagio 09:59
• 2 Beach: Piano Quintet in F-Sharp Minor, Op. 67: II. Adagio espressivo 08:51
• 3 Beach: Piano Quintet in F-Sharp Minor, Op. 67: III. Allegro agitato 09:33
• Samuel Barber (1910 - 1981):
• 4 Barber: Dover Beach, Op. 3 07:25
• Florence Price (1887 - 1953): Piano Quintet in A Minor:
• 5 Price: Piano Quintet in A Minor: I. Allegro non troppo 13:28
• 6 Price: Piano Quintet in A Minor: II. Andante con moto 07:38
• 7 Price: Piano Quintet in A Minor: III. Juba. Allegro 03:50
• 8 Price: Piano Quintet in A Minor: IV. Scherzo. Allegro 02:35
• Total Runtime 01:03:19

Info for American Quintets

Hailed by The Times for its ‘exhilarating performances’, the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective was dreamed up in 2017 by Tom Poster and Elena Urioste, who met through the BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists scheme. The Collective operates with a flexible roster which features many of today’s most inspirational musicians, both instrumentalists and singers, and its creative programming is marked by an ardent commitment to celebrating diversity of all forms and a desire to unearth lesser-known gems of the repertoire. This ethos is clear in their repertoire selection for this their début recording.

The Piano Quintet is one of Amy Beach’s better-known works, which the KCC collectively fell in love with during a residency at the Cheltenham festival. Composed in 1907, the work reflects the strong influence of the music of Brahms.

Florence Price famously claimied to face ‘two handicaps – those of sex and race’, and much of her music remained unpublished at the time of her death. Additionally, a significant quantity of her manuscripts had disappeared without trace. It was not until 2009 that a cache of them (including two lost symphonies) was discovered by property developers in the attic of an abandoned house in Illinois – including the score for the Piano Quintet in A minor that receives its world première recording here. Although characteristically conservative in its late-romantic idiom, the piece celebrates Price’s African American heritage with echoes of spirituals and hymns, and the popular juba stomping dance rooted in the slave plantations of the Deep South.

Between these two piano quintets sits Samuel Barber’s early Dover Beach, a setting of Matthew Arnold’s famous poem that has remained one of the best-known works in the voice-and-quartet repertoire.

Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective

Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective
is a flexible ensemble of wonderful, joyful, kind, passionate musicians who can’t wait to share chamber music with you.

Like many musicians, we spend a lot of time worrying about the world - about inequality, prejudice, violence, bullying, divisive rhetoric. Chamber music has an extraordinary power to bring people together: it unites musicians as equals, and draws listeners in to its intimate, transportive world.

We love to devise creative and innovative programmes, to curate multi-concert series and residencies, and to showcase great music both familiar and lesser-known. Our diverse and brilliant team hopes also to be able to inspire and educate audiences of all generations in the joys of chamber music, and ultimately to bring a bit of happiness and unity to our currently rather fractured-seeming world.

Booklet for American Quintets