Those who were lucky enough to grab a ticket to last week’s wonderful performance by Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective were in for a real Kafkaesque treat.
The concert formed part of a programme of University-wide events and activities celebrating the literary works and enduring global legacy of Franz Kafka and marks the centenary anniversary of the author’s untimely death. Prior to the performance, Professor Carolin Duttlinger, Co-Director of the Oxford Kafka Research Centre, gave a talk about Kafka’s deeply ambivalent relationship with music, which is expressed in both his personal and his literary writings. She traced his fascination with cabaret to his later engagement with Mahler.
The revised programme featured Beethoven’s String Quintet in C Major, Op 29, as Francesca Chiejina (soprano) was unable to perform due to ill health. This was a welcome addition to start the evening as it is Beethoven’s only full-scale, original composition in the string quintet genre, which was performed brilliantly and with much gusto by the musicians which featured Elena Urioste and Savitiri Grier on violin, Juan-Miguel Hernandez and Edgar Francis on viola and Laura van der Heijden on the cello.
The richly expressive programme explored themes of metamorphosis and transformation through two of the most thrilling chamber works in the repertoire: Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht is an impassioned depiction of a couple whose lives are transfigured as they walk through the night, while Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen (in its string septet version) is a heart-rending reaction against the destruction of European culture and heritage in the Second World War.
While most of the programme consisted of relatively youthful works, Richard Strauss wrote Metamorphosen in his 80’s, during the final months of the Second World War. Haunted by the destruction of irreplaceable buildings and art in the war, Strauss saw Metamorphosen as an elegy for all that he cherished in German culture. The performers thoroughly embraced the sombre overtones and emotional gravity of the piece and were joined by Tony Rymer on cello and Philip Nelson on double bass, which resulted in a rousing response from the audience.
Following the interval, Arnold Schoenberg’s iconic Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) opened darkly and mournfully, taking the audience on a wildly veering journey as its musical motifs of a man and woman walking when she confesses she is bearing a child ‘and not by you’ then ends in hope and transcendence. A truly thrilling finale to an impassioned and exhilarating performance from the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective.
