Join Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective and guests as we travel back to the Belle Époque and a world immortalised by Proust, Parisian high society, and its glittering salons.
KALEIDOSCOPE CHAMBER COLLECTIVE

Karim Sulayman – Tenor
Elena Urioste – Violin
Savitri Grier – Violin
Edgar Francis – Viola
Laura van der Heijden – Cello
Tom Poster – Piano

“I wondered whether music might not be the unique example of what might have been – if the invention of language, the formation of words, the analysis of ideas had not intervened – the means of communication between souls.”  Proust.

By the turn of the century, the Paris salons were places where composers, poets, playwrights, and authors would come together. For Proust, who loved music, they provided opportunities to encounter the composers he held in high esteem.

One such person is the Venezuelanborn composer, conductor, singer, and writer Reynaldo Hahn – once Proust’s lover – who remained a close friend for life. Their relationship was known in fashionable social circles of late nineteenth-century Paris, but not to the wider public during their lifetimes.Numerous letters signed by Proust show his intimate bond with Hahn, whose exquisite songs and sumptuous chamber music are among the greatest musical gems of the period.

Through music and song, interspersed with readings, we are transported back to the love, life, music, and words of these great men.

The programme includes instrumental and vocal chamber music from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries, by Reynaldo Hahn, Gabriel Fauré, Mélanie Bonis, Lili Boulanger, Étienne Moulinié and Jean-Philippe Rameau.

The Kaleidoscope Collective will be joined by:
Schola Cantorum choir
Steven Grahl Conductor of Schola Cantorum
Adam Cole double bass

“I want you to be here all the time but as a god in disguise, whom no mortal would recognize.”  Proust

Pre-Concert introduction with Jennifer Rushworth, Simon Kemp and Jennifer Yee.