When Alan Gilbert takes up his position as its new principal conductor, the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra marks the occasion with three intensive weeks full of music. With six exciting and many-faceted programmes, Gilbert forges links between tradition and modernity, between the Old and the New World, between musicians and the audience. In this chamber concert he picks up the viola himself: in Brahms's two string sextets.
As a young pianist and composer, Brahms was looking for an instrumental genre where tradition hadn't yet left too great a mark. And he was lucky! The deputy head of music at publisher Simrock bought the rights to Brahms's First String Sextet against his father's will, and landed a surprise hit. Incidentally the first performance was given by an ensemble led by a friend of the composer's, the violin virtuoso Joseph Joachim. read less