While I haven’t listened to the Boccherini works, nor really to many other sextets, it seems perhaps that Brahms did with the sextet what Beethoven did with the piano trio, put his stamp on a form that didn’t have the imposing heritage that a quartet or symphony would, and made a smaller, but perhaps more noticeable splash. Although Luigi Boccherini had written a dozen sextets much earlier on, there were apparently almost zero examples of purely string sextets until this work of Brahms’. Wikipedia also makes note that this sextet is a special one for another reason. That is to say, Brahms hesitated with his first quartet the way he did with his first symphony. 51) didn’t come until 1873, after a piano trio, two piano quartets, a piano quintet, and two sextets, (not in that order). 18, but his first string quartet (one of the two that make up op. In 1860, when Brahms was younger than I am, he wrote this sextet, op. I’d originally decided to write about Brahms’ first quartet, which might seem to be the logical choice until you look at opus numbers. This piece marks our first official departure from the ‘quartet’ of String Quartet Saturday (apart from the solo cello works, which were more of a milestone). I say that not being very familiar with it, really, but being far more eager to get to know it after hearing a few of these early works. However, elsewhere the players demonstrate a deep understanding of Brahms’s music, with their beautifully clear textures in the scherzo, the poised, otherworldly calm of their Poco adagio and the last movement’s charmingly lilting Viennese waltz.Brahms’ chamber music is something special.
Sextet no.2 gets off to a less promising start, with ensemble between the violin’s rising melody and the undulating viola quavers failing to gel. If the last two movements are sometimes too careful and cerebral, the scherzo’s joyous, whirling trio goes a long way towards dispelling any fustiness. The Andante’s noble viola melody is luxuriously bowed, and the listener fully experiences the variety of textures in the variations, from billowing waves of demisemiquavers to the bare sound of open strings. Listening to the disc’s closely recorded sound, there’s the sensation of sitting among the players, with every detail audible, particularly the middle parts. The ensemble creates a rich, brown sound that immerses one in warmth, a mood maintained by the gently lilting second subject – but then sadly shattered when the tempo is too brusquely pushed on at the animato cello theme. The expansive opening of Brahms’s B flat major Sextet is one of the great moments in chamber music and the all-Czech Pražák, joined by half of the Zemlinsky Quartet, does not disappoint.
Musicians: Pražák Quartet, Petr Holman (viola) Vladimír Fortin (cello) Description: A generally successful pairing of Brahms’s two sextets
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