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.
After the interval, the violas and cellos swapped seats. The String Sextet No 2 that resulted was finely wrought and lucid where No 1 had been robust. Zimmermann’s sun-baked tone spread subtly outwards, while Queyras placed pizzicatos like drops of liquid gold. Parts of the first movement were icy in the sudden absence of vibrato; parts of the second showcased total symbiosis between the instruments now grouped in threes, the sinuous melody long-breathed and sometimes little more than a whisper. Even the trio’s energetic savagery was carefully shaped, while the chromatic lines of the third movement were limpid and beautifully strange. The Belcea’s cellist Antoine Lederlin carved out his big melodic moment of the finale, his tone mellower than Queyras’s, before giving way to others in the movement’s play of momentum and hiatus.
The closing moments were almost pointillistic as all six musicians hurled themselves through one more turn on Brahms’s harmonic merry-go-round – a collective effort, joyously unbuttoned.
