When the Vienna String Sextet got together for their first rehearsal, it's a fair bet they played through the final work on this programme. But while Brahms's B flat Sextet is one of only a handful of real masterpieces in the genre, there are plenty of other interesting works if, like this ensemble, you know where to look.
Moreover, the string sextet line-up - two each of violins, violas and cellos - has inspired some skilled arrangers, among them Rudolf Leopold, whose transcription of Bartok's Romanian Dances here made an exhilarating opener. Next came his version of Berg's Piano Sonata No 1, a work of fermented, no-holds-barred Romanticism, its many intertwined lines each moving with such individual purpose it seemed incredible that it could have been written for keyboard.
In a less fevered context, the angry opening of Ervin Schulhoff's String Sextet would have sounded like an explosion. Schulhoff was a Czech composer who settled in Germany, where his circle included Grosz and Klee; he died in the Wülzburg concentration camp in 1942. Begun soon after the end of the previous war, his dark sextet is full of relentless repeated figures, creating drive in the first movement and, conversely, an uneasy stillness in the second. Here there was no let-up in its brooding atmosphere, though the third movement, with its flurries of left-hand pizzicato - the string plucked with the same hand that's stopping it - created a curious effect, as if someone had smuggled a piano on to the stage.
But it was in the Brahms that the Sextet's 21 years together in this line-up really showed, in communication, virtuosity and, maybe, just a touch of complacency. Part of the problem was that the first violinist, Erich Höbarth, could be overly dominant; with the others trying to keep up, some crescendos peaked too soon. If any, it was the more straightforward melodies that lost shape; the most complex moments were made to sound easy. But there was some richly impassioned playing from all six performers, and with their Hungarian-style Strauss encore they rounded the evening off with a shout.
