Chamber Music

I love chamber music. While listening to great big orchestras is an incredible experience, listening to 4 or 5 musicians is undeniably more intimate. The music is just as powerful, and it’s almost as if you can hear it better. And I find it amazing that they are always able to stay together.
When you listen to chamber music, you can hear several different sounds, but only if you listen closely. If you close your eyes, and lean back, you can hear that one cello is plucking notes, while the other is softly bowing, the deep notes resonating through the piece almost unnoticeably. You can hear two different violas—two different violins, sometimes playing harmonies with each other, sometimes playing a series of notes all on their own, but always in sync. And if you open your eyes, you can tell which musician is playing what.
But why would you need to? There are times in the String Sextet when only a few instruments play at a time. Maybe just a violin and a cello, maybe just the violas. But when they all play together, that’s when it’s truly magical. That’s when everything fits—when everything sounds right—that’s when you get that feeling inside you, that feeling that this music is bigger than the musicians, bigger than the paper constraining the notes, bigger than the audience.
And that’s the feeling you want.