Program notes by Eric Bromberger

Sextet for Strings in B-flat Major, Opus 18
Johannes BRAHMS
Born May 7, 1833, Hamburg
Died April 3, 1897, Vienna

We so automatically identify Brahms with Vienna that it is easy to forget that he did not move there until he was nearly 30. By that time, he had already written a great deal of music, and some of the best of these early works were composed while he was a court musician in Detmold. About 100 miles southwest of Hamburg, Detmold was a cultured court, much devoted to music, and for three seasons (1857-59) Brahms served as a court musician there. These years were quite productive for him musically. With a chorus, orchestra, and good solo performers at his disposal, Brahms could have his music performed immediately and could test his ideas. From these years came his two serenades for orchestra, the first two piano quartets, several choral works, and the completion of his First Piano Concerto.

It was during his final year at Detmold that Brahms began his Sextet in B-flat Major, completing it in 1860. Perhaps because it is an early work, critics have been quick to detect influences. Brahms’ admirable biographer Karl Geiringer hears the influence of Schubert in the first movement, of Beethoven in the scherzo, and of Haydn in the finale. But the Sextet already shows Brahms’ unmistakable voice, particularly in its rich sonorities and in the way a wealth of musical ideas grows out of each theme. And in contrast to the clenched intensity of some of Brahms’ late chamber music, the Sextet is full of sunlight.

A sextet is a string quartet plus additional viola and cello, and Brahms fully exploits these lower sonorities as well as playing off combinations of instruments impossible in a string quartet. The gentle, rocking main subject of the Allegro ma non troppo, heard immediately in the first cello, is only the first in a number of thematic ideas in this sonata-form movement, but its relaxed and flowing ease sets a tone that will run throughout the Sextet–this is music that proceeds along a mellow songfulness rather than through the collision of unrelated ideas. Brahms’ performance markings tell the tale here: the first theme is marked espressivo; the second subject–for upper strings–is marked dolce and pianissimo; while the third, a winding idea for cello, is marked poco forte espressivo animato. The development treats the first two thematically, but the third is developed rhythmically: Brahms derives a series of rhythmic patterns from this theme that help bind the movement together, and the theme reappears in its melodic shape only in the recapitulation. The lengthy movement closes with a nice touch: the brief coda, played pizzicato, moves gracefully to the two concluding chords.

The second movement, in somber D minor, is a theme and six variations. The first viola immediately lays out the firmly-drawn theme, and the first three variations seem barely able to suppress a sort of volcanic fury that seethes beneath the surface of this music. Even in chamber music Brahms favored a heavy sonority, and at several points in these variations all six instruments are triple-stopped, creating huge chords played simultaneously on eighteen strings. A ray of sunlight falls across the music at the fourth variation, which moves to D major, while the sonorous fifth is almost entirely the province of the first viola, accompanied by the violins’ wispy octaves. The dark sixth variation serves as the coda–the cello, playing with an almost choked sonority, returns to the D-minor darkness of the opening and leads the movement to its quiet close.

After these two massive movements, the pleasing Scherzo zips past in barely three minutes. The scherzo section itself is playful but feels a little subdued in comparison to the slashing, full-throated trio. This rises to a sonorous climax before the return of the opening scherzo; Brahms closes with a mighty coda derived from the trio. The concluding Poco Allegretto e grazioso is a rondo based on the first cello’s amiable opening theme. Significant interludes intrude on the course of the movement, which makes use of the same kind of rhythmic underpinning that bound the first movement together so imaginatively. The rondo theme itself undergoes variation as this movement proceeds, and Brahms rounds things off with a coda so powerful that it feels virtually symphonic.

Two Pieces for String Octet, Opus 11
Dmitri SHOSTAKOVICH
Born September 25, 1906, St. Petersburg
Died August 9, 1975, Moscow

When Shostakovich died in 1975, he was remembered primarily as a symphonist, but the last several decades have seen new interest in his chamber music, particularly the impressive cycle of fifteen string quartets. Shostakovich came to the string quartet relatively late in life, but as a very young man he had experimented with chamber music, composing a piano trio at 17 and the Two Pieces for String Octet at 18, while he was still a conservatory student.

From this same period came Shostakovich’s dazzling First Symphony, Opus 10, and in fact he worked on the symphony and the Two Pieces simultaneously. The Two Pieces are in the same neo-classical manner as the symphony. Shostakovich scored this music for string octet, specifically the same double string quartet that another teenaged composer, Felix Mendelssohn, had used in his Octet. The form can seem strange: this brilliant, bittersweet music consists of two contrasting and unrelated movements, both characterized by high energy levels.

Composed in December 1924, the Prelude is dominated by the powerful sequence of ominous chords heard at the very beginning. This movement is episodic, with sharply contrasting passages for muted triplets, pizzicato chords, and a virtuoso part for the first violin before closing on a quiet unison D. The Scherzo, written in July 1925, is much more acerbic. It too is episodic, though here the thematic material tends to be short and angular. The fiery main idea, announced by the first violin, rushes this movement to its sudden, powerful close.

The Two Pieces for String Octet were first performed in Moscow on January 9, 1927, by the combined Glière and Stradivarius Quartets.

Octet for Strings in E-flat Major, Opus 20
Felix MENDELSSOHN
Born February 3, 1809, Hamburg
Died November 4, 1847, Leipzig

It has become a cliché with a certain kind of critic to say that Mendelssohn never fulfilled the promise of his youth. Such a charge is a pretty tough thing to say about someone who died at 38–most of us would think Mendelssohn never made it out of his youth. And such a charge overlooks the great works Mendelssohn completed in the years just before his death: the Violin Concerto, the complete incidental music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Elijah. But there can be no gainsaying the fact that the young Mendelssohn was a composer whose gifts and promise rivaled–perhaps even surpassed–the young Mozart’s. The child of an educated family that fully supported his talent, Mendelssohn had by age 9 written works that were performed by professional groups in Berlin. At 12 he became close friends with the 72-year-old Goethe, at 17 he composed the magnificent overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and at 20 he led the performance of the St. Matthew Passion that was probably the key event in the revival of interest in Bach’s music.

Mendelssohn completed his Octet in October 1825, when he was 16. One of the finest of his early works, the Octet is remarkable for its polished technique, its sweep, and for its sheer exhilaration. Mendelssohn’s decision to write for a string octet is an interesting one, for such an ensemble approaches chamber-orchestra size, and a composer must steer a careful course between orchestral sonority and true chamber music. Mendelssohn handles this problem easily. At times this music can sound orchestral, as he sets different groups of instruments against each other, but the Octet remains true chamber music–each of the eight voices is distinct and important, and even at its most dazzling and extroverted the Octet preserves the equal participation of independent voices so crucial to chamber music.

Mendelssohn marked the first movement Allegro moderato ma con fuoco, and certainly there is fire in the very beginning, where the first violin rises and falls back through a range of three octaves. Longest by far of the movements, the first is marked by energy, sweep, and an easy exchange between all eight voices before rising to a grand climax derived from the opening theme. By contrast, the Andante is based on the simple melody announced by the lower strings and quickly taken up by the four violins. This gentle melodic line becomes more animated as it develops, with accompanying voices that grow particularly restless.

The Scherzo is the most famous part of the Octet. Mendelssohn said that it was inspired by the closing lines of the Walpurghisnacht section near the end of Part I of Goethe’s Faust, where Faust and Mephistopheles descend into the underworld. He apparently had in mind the final lines of the description of the marriage of Oberon and Titania:

Clouds go by and mists recede,
Bathed in the dawn and blended;
Sighs the wind in leaf and reed,
And all our tale is ended.

This music zips along brilliantly. Mendelssohn marked it Allegro leggierissimo–“as light as possible”–and it does seem like goblin music, sparkling, trilling, and swirling right up to the end, where it vanishes into thin air.

Featuring an eight-part fugato, the energetic Presto demonstrates the young composer’s contrapuntal skill. There are many wonderful touches here. At one point sharp-eared listeners may detect a quotation, perhaps unconscious, of “And He Shall Reign” from the Hallelujah Chorus of Handel’s Messiah, and near the end Mendelssohn skillfully brings back the main theme of the Scherzo as a countermelody to the finale’s polyphonic complexity. It is a masterstroke in a piece of music that would be a brilliant achievement by a composer of any age.