String Quartet in C ("Emperor") - Haydn

Evocacion, El Puerto, Corpus Christi - Albeniz Piano Quintet in A, Op 81 - Dvorak

The Music Festival in Great Irish Houses ended its 30th birthday season at the weekend, back in its birthplace, Castletown House, with an attractive programme of well-loved classics.

The St Petersburg String Quartet, formed in 1985 by graduates of the Leningrad Conservatory, pushed Haydn's music a little too hard. Perhaps taking their cue from the rustic dance in the centre of the first movement and anxious to accentuate the contrasts of mood and sound level that abound in the "Emperor Quartet", the players adopted a violence of attack that would have been more appropriate to a quartet by Shostakovich. As a result the gentle second movement, which contains the Emperor's Hymn, leaned towards sentimentality, not a feeling one readily associates with Haydn.

If the contrasts between attack and restraint had been less marked, the work would have sounded more of its period and more homogeneous, even if it were to back the excitement of a 20th-century approach.

It is curious how Albeniz, a Catalan, identified himself so thoroughly with the music of southern Spain that the 12 parts of his Iberia suite have their inspiration in the sounds and sights of Andalusia. Happily, Hugh Tinney avoided the temptation to bring out the touristic element in the music and by crisp articulation and neat pedalling presented a cleaned-up version, restored and revitalised and still glittering with Albeniz's bravura piano writing.

Aleniz was called the "Spanish Liszt"; after hearing Tinney's performance of the first three pieces, in particular Corpus Christi, he might well have been called the "Spanish Mussorgsky".

The St Petersburg Quartet's enthusiastic approach to Dvorak's Piano Quintet was ably matched by Hugh Tinney, and his cooler style of playing gave added force and significance to the warmly romantic playing of the Russian group.