Sextuors à cordes

Description

Brahms is one of the first composers to write for two violins, two violas, and two cellos, paving the way for Dvořák, Tchaikovsky, Korngold, and Schoenberg. His two sextets are youthful works, composed in 1860 and 1865... The second is of "the same joyful vein" as the first, Brahms wrote to his publisher. However, the composer's life is dark at this time; his mother dies suddenly, and his romantic relationship with soprano Agathe von Siebold is a failure; the first movement of the sextet actually opens with a motif in the viola whose notes are A-G-A-D-H-E, or AGADHE in German... The Belcea Quartet enlisted their friends Tabea Zimmermann and Jean-Guihen Queyras to record these peaks of chamber music following a concert tour in some of Europe's main venues.