Bruckner meets Brahms – and Mendelssohn

Brahms and Bruckner both shared a fondness for “Gselchtes mit Knödel” – smoked meat with dumplings – but the similarities ended there. “Bruckner’s works are not compositions, they’re a fraud,” Brahms once remarked – and the antipathy was very much mutual. All the more intriguing, then, to set the two composers side by side, as in this chamber music evening. Bruckner is represented by his tender Intermezzo, rich in Ländler rhythms, while Brahms’s String Quintet No. 2 shifts between exuberance and melancholy. Opening the programme is the effervescent String Quintet No. 2 by Felix Mendelssohn, performed by the Brahms Ensemble Berlin.