String Sextet No. 2 in G major, Op. 36

Brahms's Second String Sextet in G major (1864–65) is one of the most intimate and personal of all his chamber works, written during a period of painful emotional turmoil and haunted by the ghost of an abandoned love affair. The opening movement's broad, ruminative G major theme, introduced by the first cello and taken up by the other five voices in a great flowering of counterpoint, immediately establishes a tone of reflective warmth and formal mastery. The scherzo's wayward, harmonically surprising character and the slow movement's D minor variations — with their increasingly intense elaborations of a simple ground — reveal Brahms working at the deepest level of musical thought. The finale's rondo provides relief in a spirit of dance-like good humor without dispelling the work's underlying gravitas. The interplay of six equal string voices creates a richness of texture unique in the chamber repertoire, and the work rewards performers and listeners willing to inhabit its world of complex, mature emotion.