by Nicholas Stevens
In the ten seconds that conclude the first movement of Antonín Dvořák’s Sextet in A, the world outside falls away. The players must sing out the first theme at full volume, slowing as though crossing a finish line—then, a moment of gut-wrenching tension gives way to a fading sunset of a chord. A merely excellent ensemble might pull out all the stops here. Yet the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Chamber Ensemble, being the first-rate group of musicians they long have been, keep this moment incandescent while maintaining a sense of larger-scale trajectory. [Read more…]
Ever since Haydn established the string quartet as the ensemble de rigueur, chamber music for strings has tended to operate in base four. There are many variants on the quartet (“4 ± n”, as a math teacher might write it), but even when you subtract a violin (Beethoven) or add a viola (Mozart), a cello (Schubert), or a double bass (Dvořák) — or, as in this concert, when you pump it up to a sextet (Brahms) or an octet (Mendelssohn, Shostakovich) — the quartet remains the norm.