The Belcea Quartet plays Brahms II

Video available until 24 May 2022

The Belcea Quartet is generally regarded as one of the world’s best string quartets, and it has a large and faithful body of fans in Hamburg. As part of the digital 2021 Hamburg International Music Festival, the ensemble devotes itself on two separate evenings to Johannes Brahms’s works for strings, and invites prominent guests to join them. After a string quartet and a quintet in the first recital, their second concert is devoted to the early string sextets – two works where the composer creates an almost orchestral fullness of sound. The quartet is reinforced here by two top-class artists: Tabea Zimmermann on the viola and cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras.

Note: All Hamburg International Music Festival 2021 concerts are available to stream free of charge. Once premiered, each concert stream can be accessed for the whole festival period.

An overview of all 2021 festival concerts.

Belcea Quartet
Corina Belcea violin
Axel Schacher violin
Krzysztof Chorzelski viola
Antoine Lederlin violoncello

Tabea Zimmermann viola
Jean-Guihen Queyras violoncello

Johannes Brahms (1833–1897)
String Sextet No. 1 in B-flat major, Op. 18 (1862)
String Sextet No. 2 in G major, Op. 36 (1864/65)

Duration: approx. 70 minutes

String quartets are a dime a dozen in the world of chamber music. Trios and quintets are far less numerous, while serious duos and sextets are very rare. One possible reason for this is that the combination of melody and accompanying trio very naturally leads to the quartet form. Other instrumentations are less popular because they involve deviating from the ideal of four-part texture: in the duo, it seems that there are voices missing, while in the sextet it appears that there are too many superfluous ones. As a result, duos for melodic instruments are often only études, for teachers and students for instance, while the sextet and other large ensembles have a reputation as being superficial serenade music.

Now you can’t exactly call Johannes Brahms’s two string sextets aesthetic lightweights, but there are certainly parallels with the entertaining night music of the eighteenth century – including traditional dance-like elements and, in the first sextet, a comparatively simple structure that clearly separates the melody from the accompaniment.

Brahms admitted that he had begun and abandoned more than 20 string quartets before he published his two quartets, Op. 51, when he was 40 years old. The reason behind those years of hesitancy was his almost pathological self-criticism – an insecurity in the face of Beethoven’s unsurpassable achievements. In contrast, his First String Sextet of 1859/60 was a great success at the first attempt early in his career, presumably because the instrumentation was not burdened with an intimidating tradition. A young composer could approach the sextet form far less self-consciously.

In both sextets, Brahms took the traditional four-movement model as his point of reference. The first movement in both sextets is in the traditional sonata form – however, in the first sextet it contains three themes rather than the usual two. The expressive, gently flowing main theme is initially played by the first cello before the first violin takes over. Shortly afterwards, a waltz-like melody is played by several instruments – but in the »wrong« key of A major. The third theme is reminiscent of a ländler, a folk dance.

Brahms composed the second movement in his favourite form, namely as a set of variations. However, the foundation of the six variations is not the initial melody, but the underlying harmonic pattern. In the first three variations, movement becomes increasingly vivacious, culminating in the cresting and plunging bass passages of the third. No. 5 is like a musette – it’s reminiscent of bagpipe music.

In the subsequent scherzo, the playful character lies not in the rhythm, as is often the case, but in the harmonics. After firmly establishing the basic tonality with constant oscillation, Brahms surprises the listener with completely unexpected twists. The finale then strikes a typical serenade sound: its graceful flourishes and the closed, regularly structured themes point to the Rococo period. Packaged in the rondo form, it brilliantly modifies the recurring chorus with every repetition.

Brahms often composed two works in the same genre in quick succession: for example the serenades Op. 11 and Op. 16, the two string quartets Op. 51, and the pairs of symphonies Nos. 1 and 2, and Nos. 3 and 4. »And the second work,« according to Brahms’s biographer Hans Gál, »is always even richer, his technique even surer, the form even freer and more generous.«

Many music lovers believe the same about the Second String Sextet, composed in 1864/65. In the first sextet, Brahms had several instruments playing in octaves or in unison in many places, generating orchestral effects. He reduced his use of such effects in the second sextet, where counterpoint – the complex, contrasting voice leading of Baroque tradition – plays an important role instead. In this way the main theme of the first movement is artfully used, for example as a four-voice canon. However, there were consequences to such erudition. While the first sextet brought Brahms the first major success of his career, the second only gradually established a place for itself in concert life.

After the dance-like second movement, there is another slow one, a very unusual set of variations. The theme is introduced with such independent counter-voices that the listener hardly recognises it as a melody. And the subsequent sections take things so far away from its original form that the critic Eduard Hanslick, who was also a friend of Brahms’s, called it »variations on no theme«.

The finale uses motifs from the opening movement as well as from the scherzo – with Brahms thus rounding the sextet into a cycle.

Text: Jürgen Ostmann
Translation: Dr Seiriol Dafydd

Supported by the Kühne Foundation, the Hamburg Ministry of Culture and Media, Stiftung Elbphilharmonie and the Förderkreis Internationales Musikfest Hamburg