Johannes Brahms
   String Sextets

* Sextet No. 1 in Bb, op. 18
* Sextet No. 2 in G, op. 36

L'Archibudelli
Total Time: 69:41
Sony SK 68252

Summary for the Busy Executive: Clear as a bell, and that may be the
trouble.

The players of the Historically Informed Performance movement have long
ago broken out of their Medieval and Renaissance cubbyholes.  They now
dominate Baroque music to the extent that you probably won't hear your
local symphony play any instrumental work by Bach or Handel in the next
generation or so.  As you can probably tell, I'm of two minds about it.  I
can't deny that the HIP results haven't revealed something new and exciting
about this music.  On the other hand, many roads lead to musical Nirvana,
and I hate to see any of them shut down a priori.  Undoubtedly, those very
orchestral behemoths and demi-behemoths that used to wallow in Handel-Harty
and Bach-Stokowski or tromped their way through the Brandenburgs have
become diffident and have to a great extent left the field to the HIPsters.
I wish the old guard would come back.  They have something to offer that
"authentic" instrumentalists lack.

Now HIP has made its way into the Classical and Romantic eras - in short,
the standard orchestral repertoire.  For many reasons, I believe they'll
remain largely an addendum here.  First, most people love the sound of the
large modern orchestra and have grown so used to that sound that it comes
across as "natural." Second, I can't imagine these organizations giving up
their bread and butter.  Third, we think of this repertoire in terms of a
"modern" sound largely because a host of great conductors have convinced
us.  When we think of the Next Great Conductor, we look at interpretations
of a few pieces, mainly Austro-German, and think of large modern
orchestras.  Chamber music, however, is less "feudal," if you will.  The
field seems more open to just the kind of rethinking HIP represents.  It
also doesn't hurt that some great HIP chamber groups have sprung up, the
Quatuor Mosaiques and L'Archibudelli among them.  Nothing justifies a
theory like an actual great performance.

Brahms's string sextets represent some of his most gracious and beautiful
chamber writing.  For these works, I grew up listening to a lush modern
sound I could wallow in, and in large part that sound became part of
my conception of the piece.  L'Archibudelli upset my expectations and
consequently shocked me.  The sound - leaner, more "buzzy," particularly
in the lower instruments - took me a while to get used to.  I must say
that the playing itself is marvelous, the chamber ideal of each player
simultaneously shaping his own phrases independently of the others
and subordinating his matter to momentarily more important lines.
L'Archibudelli clarify Brahms's counterpoint - an important part of
Brahms's music - like nobody's business in works which tend to thickness
and overstuffing.  However, with these gains, we lose the rich sonorities
of, say, Heifetz and his friends.  I find myself missing them more in the
second sextet than in the first, especially in the wonderfully sonorous
harmonies of the opening.  Again, L'Archibudelli sings within an
"historically-informed" context, but I doubt most would want this version
as your only.  I'm partial to the Amadeus (with Aronowitz and Pleeth) on
DG as well as to Heifetz, Piatigorsky, and friends on RCA (not currently
available).

Sony's sound strikes me as a shade too bright, but I can live with it.

Steve Schwartz