BRAHMS STRING SEXTET
Ensemble 360 & Members of the Elias Quartet
Crucible Playhouse, Sheffield
Thursday 22 May 2025, 7.00pm
Tickets:
£22
£14 UC, PIP & DLA
£5 Students & Under 35s
BRAHMS String Sextet in G (40′)
ENESCU String Octet in C (40′)
In a final chance to catch the members of the Elias Quartet in collaboration with Ensemble 360, this celebration of music for strings centres on Brahms’s spectacular Sextet. Marked by heartbreak and romance, the piece sweeps from the wistful longing of the early movements to the warm and tender triumph of the dazzling fourth movement. Paired with Enescu’s prodigious and intricately structured epic, this luscious evening of string writing showcases the technical brilliance and big-hearted musicianship that has grown across two decades of collaboration among these very special players.
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BRAHMS Johannes, String Sextet in G Op.36
1. Allegro non troppo
2. Scherzo: Allegro non troppo
3. Poco adagio
4. Poco allegro
Brahms’s G major Sextet was written at Lichtental, near Baden-Baden and finished in 1865. Richly scored for two violins, two violas and two cellos, this intensely lyrical work opens with a soaring, yearning theme, but in the second subject Brahms reveals part of the work’s inspiration: his engagement to Agathe von Siebold which had ended badly (for both of them) rather than in marriage, as had been intended. In one phrase, often repeated, the notes A-G-A-H-E (with ‘H’ the German musical spelling for ‘B’) are used to spell out Agathe’s name. Brahms wrote of this passage: ‘Here I tore myself away from my last love.’ The Scherzo is reflective rather than playful, while the slow movement opens with chromatic lines which dominate much of the movement either side of a more animated central section. The finale, though playing with contrasts of major and minor – giving it a slightly ambiguous flavour – ends in sonorous rapture.
Nigel Simeone 2014
ENESCU George, Octet in C Op.7
Très modéré –
Très fougueux –
Lentement –
Animé – Mouvement de valse bien rythmé
Born in Romania, Enescu was a child prodigy, writing his first compositions at the age of five, and a brilliant violinist. By the time he went to Paris in 1895, he was already an immensely accomplished musician having studied violin and composition at the Vienna Conservatoire. In Paris, he studied composition with Fauré and harmony with André Gedalge (who were also Ravel’s two most important teachers). The Octet was completed in 1900, when Enesco was just nineteen years old, and a year before he wrote the popular Romanian Rhapsody No.1 for orchestra. The composer’s Preface to the score of the Octet explains something of its unusual form:
This Octet, cyclic in form, presents the following characteristics: it is divided into four distinct movements in the classic manner, each movement linked to the other to form a single symphonic movement where the sections, on an enlarged scale, follow one another according to the rules of construction for the first movement of a symphony.
Scored for two string quartets, this splendid and grandly-conceived work had to wait nearly a decade for its premiere, given in Paris on 18 December 1909. Since Enesco was already a sought-after soloist in 1900, he composed the Octet in between performances of concertos by Beethoven, Saint-Saëns and Bach. From the start of the first section (presenting a theme that somewhat resembles the main theme of Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge), Enesco’s skill at writing for his unusual forces is apparent, generating a great sense of power and momentum. The second section – “very impetuous” – is angular and jagged, and this is followed by a rather unsettled slow movement. The finale is dominated by a spiky waltz, full of wide leaps, but ending with a bold close – D flat then C in powerful octaves.
Nigel Simeone © 2012
Ensemble 360
