Arts & Events

When I heard the Cypress String Quartet play Beethoven’s Op. 130 Quartet last October in the Maybeck Studio (formerly the Maybeck Recital Hall), I experienced one of the finest chamber music concerts I’ve ever attended. I was impressed not only by the tightly integrated musicianship of the Cypress Quartet but also by the acoustic and sightline intimacy of the Maybeck Studio. In fact, I declared the Maybeck Studio the perfect venue for chamber music, outranking even the nearby Hillside Club. Well, perhaps I was too hasty in this judgment. Last night, Friday, February 12, 2016, I again heard the Cypress Quartet at Maybeck Studio, only this time the group was augmented by two more instrumentalists – Zuill Bailey on cello and Barry Shiffman on viola. The program consisted of two String Sextets by Johannes Brahms -- the Op. 18 in B-flat Major and the Op. 36 in G Major.  

What I now discovered is that while the Maybeck Studio may be perfect for string quartets and works for 1,2, and 3 instrumentalists, but when you add on more than four you reach or even surpass the upward limits of this intimate acoustic space. The Maybeck Studio, with its wood Interior and Gothic-style windows with leaded glass, presents a rather hard acoustic environment. There is nothing here, except for the presence of thirty or so audience members, to soften the acoustics. Consequently, the sound produced by six instrumentalists all playing fortissimo, as they frequently do in the Brahms String Sextets, viscerally assaults the listener. To my ear, and to the ear of others with whom I discussed this issue during inter-mission, the music came across as way too loud and quite overbearing. 

This is a pity. The Cypress Quartet players clearly love these String Sextets, and they perform them with their customary aplomb. But the loudness of the music simply numbs the listener. For his part, Brahms doesn’t make things any easier. This is aggressive music! Even the Andante of the String Sextet No. 1, Op. 18, ostensibly a slow movement with variations, contains many fiercely aggressive passages throughout. One might have expected that this movement, at least, which Brahms later transcribed as a solo piano piece for Clara Schumann, would offer some languorous respite from the boisterous assault of this work’s other three movements. But no! There is no respite here, and the music assails the listener unrelentingly. 

These String Sextets by Brahms are not exactly my cup of tea. Whereas the Brahms Violin Concerto sets me dreaming, and his 4^th Symphony inspires me to do some hefty living-room conducting, his String Sextets leave me cold. Mozart’s string quartets and quintets enchant me; Beethoven’s string quartets I find endlessly fascinating; Schubert’s string quartets and quintets sing to me. But Brahms’s String Sextets simply numb me. I find them turgid, rhetorical, overblown. Brahms was 27 years old when he wrote the B-flat Major String Sextet. He sent the score to his friend, violinist Joseph Joachim, with a note saying, “I have been quite a long time over it and I do not suppose that this will have raised your expectations… But with God’s help, nothing is impossible.” Joachim liked the score but suggested changing the opening melodic material from the first violin to the first cello, a switch Brahms 

promptly implemented. As played by the Cypress Quartet’s cellist Jennifer Kloetzel, this opening material gets the work off to a nice, mellow start. When the first violin breaks in, things get a bit more agitated. Cecily Ward handles her instrument impeccably, but the music definitely becomes aggressive, as it does throughout this first movement. The second movement, an Andante, as mentioned above, leads one to expect a languorous, perhaps lyrical movement. But Brahms offers us a surprisingly fierce, aggressive bit of music here. Toward the end of this movement there are passages for two violins and two violas playing together. There follows an energetic scherzo, which is lively and brief. The finale features a slow, gracious opening, which quickly becomes agitated, however. Near the very end of this work, the first viola, here played by Ethan Filner, takes the lead in stating the final phrase, which is echoed in the two cellos. 

After intermission, the Cypress String Quartet and their guests returned to play the Brahms String Sextet No. 2 in G Major, Op. 36. This work, written four years after the String Sextet No.1, bears a subtitle, “Agathe,” for it is a work in which Brahms more or less exorcised a failed romance with a woman named Agathe von Siebold. Her name, in fact, is hidden in the music (the notes A-G-A-H-E, with the H being a B-natural in German notation.) A forceful opening theme is sounded by the second cello, played here by guest cellist Zuill Bailey. This movement, an Allegro ma non troppo, plays itself out aggressively. The second movement begins with a light and airy scherzo, which becomes agitated later on. Likewise, the final movement starts out graciously but it too turns agitated later on, until the music eventually simply fades away.  

The Cypress String Quartet is comprised of Cecily Ward on first violin, Tom Stone on second violin, Ethan Filner on viola, and Jennifer Kloetzel on cello. They have been performing as a group for 20 years and will be disbanding at the end of 2016. In the meantime, they intend to celebrate their 20 years together with many more concerts of wonderful music-making, including a Salon Series III concert in May when they will perform some of their favorite works, including, as Tom Stone announced on Friday, the Ravel String Quartet.