With Bruckner, "string quintet" is an understatement: the work is less a piece of chamber music than a full-blown Bruckner symphony for five strings, whose slow movement is one of the most beautiful products of late Romanticism. It is not by chance that one speaks of musical cathedrals when referring to Bruckner, who liked to think in large units. Wagner's Tristan, on the other hand, is flowing architecture. Incessant longing, breathing harmonies: in the string sextet version, the incessant longing of the famous prelude is experienced in its essence, and with a clarity of sound that will surprise even experienced Wagnerians.
