The Hallé's lunchtime Chamber Series at Hallé St Peter's provides a unique opportunity to hear players and guest artists perform in more intimate surroundings.

Guest violinist Magnus Johnston, newly-appointed leader of the Royal Opera House, joins Hallé players for two of the greatest string sextets. The sextet which opens Richard Strauss’s last opera, Capriccio, becomes the subject of the drama – which is greater, poetry or music? This warm, flowing music definitely makes a good case for the supremacy of the latter. The warmth continues in Brahms’s G major sextet, described by musicologist Donald Tovey as ‘one of his most ethereal works’. The silver-toned first movement is followed by a Scherzo, sometimes melancholy, sometimes playful. The third movement moves from drama to a radiant conclusion before the last movement scurries joyfully to an exciting close.