Brahms Strings Tickets

When 57-year-old Brahms penned his Second String Quintet, he truly believed that his best work was behind him. His biographer Walter Niemann later disagreed, calling it “the most passionate, the freshest, and the most deeply inspired by nature” of Brahms’ entire catalog.

Hear his stunning masterpiece paired with another one, written 30 years earlier. Warm, youthful, and soulful, his First Sextet proves just how much richer and more versatile a string quartet becomes when you add one more cello and viola.

Violas get the spotlight in Bowen’s Fantasia, a piece that captures both wistfulness and driving energy with “a harmonic language and idiom peculiarly his own” (Gramophone).

Opening the program is Jessie Montgomery’s Strum quartet—a nostalgic yet ecstatic celebration filled with American folk melodies and the spirit of dance.