Belcea Quartet - Brahms: String Sextets - The Strad

The Belcea is not one of those quartets that habitually shares violin top-dog duties, but it’s nice to see its two distinguished guests here dividing the honours of first viola and cello with the resident players across the two sextets. Undoubtedly helped by Brahms’s supreme mastery in the medium – it is salutary to remember that forebears in the string sextet were minimal before the 1860s – the ensemble is seamless.

... benchmark recordings and performances of the two sextets, full of the fresh Romantic spirit of their young composer.