MUSIC / Maggini Quartet - Pittville Pump Room, Cheltenham

It's strange what surroundings can do to music. In the Pittville Pump Room the opening of Szymanowski's first string quartet sounded, for all the world, as English as could be; Impressionism married to modality in the 1920s makes all kinds of unexpected connections] This passing fancy was rapidly swept aside by a powerful performance of the Allegro moderato by the Maggini Quartet in blistering form.

The group brought a similar intensity to John Joubert's recently revised Third String Quartet (1987), a compelling, concentrated work in three headlong movements - even the Lento is a strongly directional fugue. Joubert's compositional voice remains both individual and approachable. A work like the Third String Quartet can stretch an audience without turning it off. The tonal heart of this music was not ideally served by the Maggini Quartet's intonation, but their communication of the work's clear sense of purpose was as bracing as a walk in one of Cheltenham's parks. A slightly self-indulgent rendition of Haydn's Joke Quartet (Op 33 No 2) sat a little uneasily amid the 20th-century fare, but a superbly idiomatic performance of Szymanowski's miraculous second quartet set all to rights.