Rosalind Ventris’s debut solo album features a selection of music for unacccompanied viola composed between 1930 (Imogen Holst’s impressive Suite for Viola) and the present day (a 2020 lockdown miniature by Thea Musgrave).

The largely British and Irish programme allows Ventris to revive substantial works by important yet still often overlooked twentieth-century composers – not only Holst but also Lillian Fuchs, Elizabeth Maconchy, Elisabeth Lutyens and Grażyna Bacewicz – alongside more recent additions to the repertoire from Musgrave, Sally Beamish and Amanda Feery.

With several of the composers themselves professional string players, this is, in Ventris’s words, ‘wonderful music – that just happens to be by women composers’.

Felix Mendelssohn Piano Sextet

Fanny Mendelssohn Piano Trio

Fanny Mendelssohn Piano Quartet

Coleridge-Taylor: Nonet, Piano Trio and Piano Quintet.

Richard Blackford's Kalon for String Quartet and String Orchestra is performed by the Albion Quartet and the Czech Philharmonic. 

Songs by Robert Hugill.

This album includes Rory Boyle's trio for clarinet, viola and piano. 

Release date: January 31st 2025.

In this new series, the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective juxtaposes piano quartets by Brahms with ones by his lesser-known contemporaries. For this first volume the group has chosen the piano quartet of Luise Adolpha Le Beau. Born in 1850 in Rastatt, in Baden, she studied with Clara Schumann and Franz Lachner, as well as Josef Rheinberger. Her extensive output covers all genres: orchestral works, plenty of choral music, two operas, and an extensive number of Lieder, solo piano pieces, and chamber music. Her Piano Quartet was composed in 1884 and performed in the Leipzig Gewandhaus that year to great critical acclaim; indeed, Julius Riedel, who was responsible for concerts in that venue, told her that her success eclipsed any he had known there. On a concert tour to Vienna in the same year, she met Brahms and Hanslick; both invited her to show them her compositions, and responded positively. Brahms’s Piano Quartet No. 2 was completed in 1861, and is noted for the strong influence of Schubert. Lasting almost fifty minutes, it is one of the most substantial piano quartets in the repertoire.

Trio Anima's debut album.

The Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective's debut album for Chandos Records. Music by Amy Beach, Florence Price and Samuel Barber. 

Gustav Holst's rarely performed work is heard for the first time in its new chamber arrangement by Dr. Joseph Fort.