Program Notes: Brahms Sextets

Strange as it may seem, Johannes Brahms exercised caution when it came to writing for strings. He certainly did very well by the violin and cello in the B-major Piano Trio when he was barely 20, in 1853. But next he chose to combine six string instruments, which he did in his two sextets, in 1860 and 1864, rather than the more traditional Haydn-Mozart-Beethoven-proven string quartet, which he didn’t venture until about 1865. And he composed his only violin concerto a year before turning out a sonata for violin and piano.  

The violin was not Brahms’ personal instrument, but he came to understand it in a very personal way. When he was only 17, he went on the road as accompanist to the Hungarian violinist Eduard Reményi. At the elbow of this brilliant player, young Johannes learned much about the instrument’s technique and capabilities and, as a bonus, came to know and love the Hungarian music Reményi always included on his programs. But his debt to Reményi didn’t stop there, for it was he who introduced the young composer to Joseph Joachim. Although only two years older than Brahms, Joachim was, at age 21, already a famous artist, known from the time he was 13 when he played the Beethoven Violin Concerto under Mendelssohn’s baton. It was Joachim who made possible Brahms’ introduction to the Schumanns — Robert and his pianist wife Clara — a relationship that was crucial to his career and his life. As was his life-long friendship with Joachim. 

The appeal to Brahms of a string sextet was based, one supposes, on the possibilities presented by the deep sonority of its two cellos and two violas playing off the soprano brilliance of two violins. As we know from his orchestral music, Brahms reveled in the gutsy strength and soulful expressiveness of the lower instruments. So, it’s no surprise that his String Sextet No. 1 in B-flat major, Op. 18 (1860) begins with a cello singing tenderly the main theme. A quick word about the rhythm here: the time signature says three beats to a measure, but this main theme falls precisely in four beats. In the 19th century, composers rarely if ever used different time signatures in the same piece, but Brahms was a rhythmic rascal and his cross rhythms are legion. 

The movement is rich in themes, one of the most memorable being the extension to the main theme, in triplets, a rhythmic unit to which Brahms was especially partial. Everywhere in this movement, and indeed in the entire sextet, Brahms’ exceptional ability to unify his material through thematic transformation, and by using melodic kernels as comfortingly recognizable signposts along the way, brings wonderful cohesion to the music. It’s easy to point out many distinctive passages, but to mention just one: where an extension of the triplet theme is in the violins, with violas and cellos playing opposing-valued notes, creating extreme agitation as a prelude to the simple, lyrical subordinate theme in the violins, now in minor. 

Recounting the splendors of the first movement could go on and on and would include the masterful unfolding of the development section, but the remainder of the sextet has its own distinctions. The second movement is a theme and six variations — a minor-key theme presented by a viola — and in the classical variation form, Brahms is second to none, before or after him. The third movement is a scherzo with more than a little rustic flavor and the concluding rondo has more than a little Schubert in it, particularly in the spring-like main theme sung gracefully by a cello.  

Notwithstanding the Schubert resemblance, the remainder of the movement is pure Brahms, with all the compositional invention and sonorous splendors that bespeaks.

Orrin Howard; courtesy of the Los Angeles Philharmonic 

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The string sextet is a format with relatively few representatives in the repertoire. Beyond the two sextets by Brahms presented in this program, there is Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir of Florence and Schoenberg’s early Verklaerte Nacht, as well as sextets by Dvořák, Raff, Reger and Korngold. Both Tchaikovsky’s and Schoenberg’s sextets also exist in string orchestra arrangements, while Brahms’ sextets have a nearly orchestral heft but still maintain the textural clarity of true chamber writing. He composed his String Sextet No. 2 in G Major, Op. 36 in 1864 while visiting Clara Schumann near Baden-Baden. 

The theme that launches the first opening Allegro non troppo creates an air of mystery and uncertainty. A slowly undulating alternation of two adjacent notes courses through the music, imparting a mysterious quality, while the upwardly rising theme seems to hover between two different keys — the nominal tonic G-Major as well as relatively distant E-flat Major. (Such tonal ambiguity is not unheard of in Brahms; it also makes its mark in the later Clarinet Quintet and even in the opening orchestral salvo of the First Piano Concerto.) Brahms puts the opening theme through its paces before presenting a warm and expressive second theme announced by the first cello. After the music rises in emotional intensity, Brahms ponies up a new theme based on the letters of the first name of Agathe von Siebold (minus the “t” and remembering that the “h” in German is our B-flat). He did so as a musical expression of his love for the young woman, but as with many a hoped-for relationship, this one also fizzled. 

The work’s Scherzo: Allegro non troppo comes next. Cast in G-minor, the prevailing mood veers between melancholy and understated humor. The upper strings float the primary melody over a plucked figure in the lower strings. Brahms adds a sequence of triplets softly articulated by the first violin and first viola before transferring the triplets to the first cello where it functions to accompany the original melody — now inverted and syncopated. The central trio makes a heady jaunt into the countryside, stomping onward in the manner of a Ländler (rustic precursor to the waltz). The movement closes with an abridged version of the Scherzo’s opening section. 

The Poco adagio third movement posits a set of five variations on a sad melody intensified by darkly expressive chromatic harmonies. The theme itself bears a familial resemblance to the rising theme from the opening movement. 

The rich fugal closing Poco allegro sweeps away lingering sighs. Though unhurried, the music is of a positive nature, and Brahms marks the main theme Tranquillo in its first appearance; later he writes Semplice. Quick-paced thematic fragments alternate with flowing cantabile tunes. Brahms’ contrapuntal mastery is in full evidence in this movement, especially as the music ramps up to a brilliant conclusion.

Steven Lowe © 2016