Your Top Six Sextets!

[Brian]

Not a poll, I don't know every sextet ever. List your favorite music for six musicians. 

6. Tchaikovsky - Souvenir de Florence for strings
5. Penderecki - Sextet for piano, horn, clarinet and strings
4. Mendelssohn - Sextet for piano and strings
3. Poulenc - Sextet for piano, flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn
2. Dvorak - Sextet for strings
1. Erno Dohnanyi - Sextet for piano, horn, clarinet and strings

Cafe Zimmermann also plays some of the Bach harpsichord concertos in ensembles of six.

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

I second the Penderecki. Otherwise, I like Schoenberg's Verklaerte Nacht in its original string 6tet version. And of course the two string 6tets by Brahms.

(Yeah, I know that's only four. Not really a vast repertoire to choose from here)

[listener]

a short list from my incomplete database as a reminder:
Martinu, Bohuslav   (La revue de cuisine)
Brahms, Johannes     Berkeley, Lennox       Casadesus, Robert
Tchaikowsky, Peter I.      Beethoven, Ludwig van         Indy, Vincent d'
Van Delden, Lex      Mendelssohn, Felix       Rheinberger, Josef Gabriel
Glinka, Mikhail     Tomasi, Henri      Röntgen, Julius      Bach, Johann Christoph F.
Poulenc, Francis     Villa-Lobos, Heitor       Glinka, Mikhail      Rimsky-Korsakov, N.

[some guy]

Now, remind me again. A sextet is five women and one guy?

OK, OK. Put the crowbar down. Nice and easy. OK.

Anyway, I love all your choices, Brian.

So there's Martinu's sextet for piano and winds. Can't be bad. And Copland's sextet, which was his attempt to get the then difficult Short Symphony music some more playing time. And Prokofiev's Overture on Hebrew Themes (racist!), which exists in two forms as well. I prefer the sextet version. (It's more racist than the orchestra version.) Also true for Verklaerte Nacht. Much more racist I mean much better in the sextet version than the orchestra version.

And Xenakis. Wow. Xenakis. Ittidra for strings. Persephassa for percussion. (Xenakis has several sextets. A couple of them I'd never even heard of until I looked on his site. Time to spend some more money.) Cage's First Construction (in Metal) is a sextet. He also has several pieces for six players.

Steve Reich has both a sextet and a double sextet, which is not ten women and two guys, as you might expect, but eleven women and myse... and one guy.

[Edit: Just discovered a group that's six pianos: Piano Circus. Their repertoire is on this page:
http://www.pianocircus.com/repertoire.html]

[Sergeant Rock]

BRAHMS            String Sextet #1 B flat op.18
DOHNÁNYI         Sextet for piano, horn, clarinet and strings op.37
PFITZNER            Sextet for clarinet, strings and piano G minor op.55
SCHOENBERG     Verklärte Nacht op.4
STRAUSS R.       Capriccio Prelude
BEETHOVEN       Sextet for 2 horns and strings E flat op.81b

Sarge

[Brahmsian]

# 1 - Tchaikovsky - Souvenir de Florence (without question).

The remainder, not necessarily in order:

Brahms Op. 18 and Op. 36 (count these as one) 
Penderecki's Sextet
Copland's Sextet
Schoenberg String Sextet "Verklarte Nacht"
Beethoven's Sextet, Op. 71 in E flat

[North Star]

Janáček - Mládí

Carry on.

[snyprrr]

Janacek Mladi
Xenakis Persephassa
Pfitzner Sextett
Villa-Lobos Sestetto Mistico
Martinu String Sextet
Copland Sextet
Roussel Serenade (other SQ/flute/harp works?)***
Xenakis Khall Perr
Piston String Sextet
Milhaud String Sextet

[val]

Brahms, Sextet opus 18 & 36

Schönberg, "Verklärte Nacht"

Chausson, Concerto for piano, violin & string Quartet

Martinu, String Sextet

Tchaikovsky, "Souvenir de Florence"