Whoever first used the phrase “playing second fiddle” to mean being less important can’t have known many string players. And they presumably weren’t familiar with Brahms’s two youthful String Sextets, where the quartet lineup is expanded with a second viola and a second cello – each an essential thread in the music’s densely vibrant warp and weft.
Anyone unconvinced might have found a conversion experience in the Belcea Quartet’s Wigmore Hall performance with violist Tabea Zimmermann and cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras. In the String Sextet No 1, those world-class soloists took the first part in each case: Zimmermann set the tone (rich, warm, generous) while Queyras’s cello lines soared and sang as the unequivocal equal of Corina Belcea’s first violin. The second movement was viscous almost to the point of stodginess – although in pudding form this intensely calorific sound would have been Michelin-starred and exquisitely proportioned. The central trio of the third was wild and biting, and in the finale, the Belcea’s new second violin, Suyeon Kang, surged to the fore through the thickets of counterpoint, while the first violin was suddenly, strikingly featherweight and delicate in dialogue with the powerful earthiness of Queyras’s cello.
