The Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective, the brainchild of violinist Elena Urioste and pianist Tom Poster, has justified its name in several ways: through the brio of its performances, through the flexibility of its instrumentation and through its commitment to diversity in its personnel and repertoire. This new release is the first of three devoted to the Brahms piano quartets – and in appropriate Kaleidoscope fashion, each will be accompanied by a less familiar work by one of Brahms’s contemporaries, starting out with Luise Adolpha Le Beau (1850-1927).

Le Beau, a Rheinberger student and Bülow protégée, produced a hefty body of works – although the strain of challenging prejudice against women composers seems to have discouraged her around the turn of the century. She’s most famous for her Mendelssohnian Cello Sonata, ‘compact and tuneful’ in the words of Andrew Farach-Colton (12/22). This later F minor Piano Quartet, getting its first recording, is even more appealing. True, it’s been widely observed that Le Beau sometimes treads water where other composers would develop their material – and there are moments where you may feel as if you’re wandering in circles. But with its winsome melodies, its aching harmonies (the first movement may remind you of Mahler’s Piano Quartet) and its imaginative contrapuntal interplay, the local landscape is sufficiently attractive to withstand the repetition. The large-scale trajectory, too, works well: the quartet moves from an insistent first movement to an infectiously rollicking finale; and it’s held together with some moderate use of cyclical technique (although nothing like the complex thematic transformation her more radical contemporaries were engaged in). This light-fingered and harmonically attentive reading makes a strong argument for an unknown work.

If only the Brahms were as convincing. The notes, by Urioste and Poster, speak of its ‘serene radiance and long-breathed lines’, but especially in the first movement, the choppy phrasing and emphatic lunges make the music sound, on the contrary, short of breath. Yes, there are some exquisite touches: listen to the lovely conclusion of the second movement and – at the opposite end of the scale – the torrential endings of the third and fourth. But too often this performance is a bit stiff, even heartless. Perhaps it would make a stronger impact if the competition were less fierce, but up against, say, the passionate reading by Richter and members of the Borodin Quartet (Philips, 10/86) or, better still, the deft version by Hamelin and the Leopold Trio (Hyperion, 1/07), the Kaleidoscope Collective sound relatively heavy-handed.