I enjoy both chamber ensembles and orchestras, and it's hard to say I prefer one over the other. There's nothing like the grandeur of a big orchestral piece, and orchestras can play a much larger variety of music. And I happen to like both the people and the programming in my orchestra. Chamber music feels more like a conversation. There is a little more pressure because it's one person to a part, but that also means more room to put an individual stamp on a piece. In this particular performance setting I also feel like there's less pressure because it's a casual afternoon of chamber music among friends, not a formal concert. We also get to pick our own repertoire, and one of the most fun parts of preparing for each of these concerts is the beginning when we come up with a short list of pieces, sight-read through them, and decide what we want to perform.

I actually know a lot of the people in this chamber music club through the orchestras I've played in. Several people (including the violinist in my quartet) play in my current orchestra, a whole bunch play in another community orchestra where I used to be principal violist pre-pandemic, and a few more play in a third community orchestra that I've subbed in occasionally.

Re: the G major movement, to me it feels like it's a happy ending to a drama. When we had a coaching session, our coach suggested that there was something operatic about the piece as a whole, and suggested that we think of the melodies as bel canto vocal lines. In that way of thinking, the earlier movements in minor keys present all the conflict in the opera, and the last movement is the final scene when everything works out happily. There's some of Mozart's sarcasm in it close to the end: when he suddenly lands on an unexpected E-flat major chord (8:43 of our video), it feels to me like he's thumbing his nose at the audience before going into the "real" ending.

Oh, one other note: the cellist in my quartet is an adult starter, and this was literally his first-ever public performance on cello. It's not the first time he's performed chamber music, though. He played violin when he was younger, stopped playing at some point, and then picked up the cello because his son started taking cello lessons.