Canberra Strings is an award-winning ensemble dedicated to high-level performances of classical chamber music. In the third concert of their 2022 series they present Brahms’s String Sextet no 1. The String Sextet in B flat Major was Brahms’s first attempt at writing chamber music for strings and pre-dates his string quartets by a decade or so. This could have been because the monumental example set by Beethoven left Brahms and others somewhat daunted. Nonetheless, in the first sextet, Brahms was able to use the more extensive possibilities of instrumental combinations with his characteristic warmth and melodic invention.