Brahms Sextet

Do not go by the year that it has been perfromed in because it is better than most modern recordings, the clarinet quintet is really good but, i would like to add that so is the other work specially the piano quintet. The recording is crisp and most importantly clear, there is no distortion of any kind. The Amadeus Quartet seems to have only one thing on their mind and that is to deliver a smooth interpretation of the sextets and quintets.

One of the greatest string quartets of the 20th-century, the - 100% Austrian - Alban Berg Quartett remains famous for their unsurpassable renditions of the great Viennese masters. The ensemble notably put on record the supreme Beethoven cycle twice, once in studio, once in the Wiener Konzerthaus. Enjoy large excerpts of these milestone recordings, coupled with late masterpieces of Schubert (the Trout Quintet featuring Elisabeth Leonskaja, the quintet with two cellos featuring Heinrich Schiff…)

Close to the Schumanns and admired by Mendelssohn and Wagner, Theodor Kirchner (1823–1903) was an accomplished pianist, organist and composer in his own right. His lifelong friendship with Brahms began when the two men met at the spa town of Baden-Baden in 1865. Robert Schumann had already mentioned him in the same breath as Brahms in the influential 1853 article which effectively launched Brahms’s career.

It makes an ideal coupling to have Brahms’s String Sextets, both charming works, on a single disc. It is striking that Brahms liked writing works in pairs, sometimes early and late, like the two piano concertos and the cello sonatas. The two clarinet sonatas go together, as do the Clarinet Quintet and Clarinet Trio, all composed for Richard Mühlfeld. Even the Violin Concerto and the Double Concerto might be regarded as counterparts.