Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective: Brahms and Contemporaries vol.3

The Strad Issue: June 2026

Description: A unique coupling and fine motivation makes for a rewarding experience

Musicians: Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective

Works: Brahms: Piano Quartet no.1. Pejačević: Piano Quartet op.25; Impromptu op.9

Catalogue number: CHANDOS CHAN20364

With this album the Kaleidoscope Collective completes its project to couple the three piano quartets of Brahms with seldom-heard music for the same forces by female composers. Dora Pejačević (Croatian, 1885–1923) is less of an unknown quantity than Luise Adolpha Le Beau (vol.1) or Louise Héritte-Viardot (vol.2), having had a good handful of her works recorded already. Her op.25 has previously appeared on disc, played by Oliver Triendl and the Sine Nomine Quartet (CPO). Coupling it with Brahms’s op.25, though, fulfils this ensemble’s aim of shining welcome light on music unjustly passed over.

It’s an early work (1908) but displays Pejačević’s command of her forces. There remains a feeling, though, that at this stage she lacked the experience to wring from her material all its possibilities: whereas with Brahms you feel that each movement takes you somewhere via manipulation of its themes and motifs, in Pejačević’s quartet there’s little of that feeling of catharsis. That her music nevertheless makes such a fine showing against a Brahmsian masterpiece is testament to the strength of her ideas; the folkish lilt of the Minuet is particularly inviting.

The Kaleidoscope players have the measure of the Brahms, too, without necessarily outclassing any number of classic recordings of this most popular of his piano quartets.

David Threasher