Aldeburgh parish church, where Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears are buried, was the setting for this recital by the Vertavo String Quartet. This Norwegian ensemble, with the English violinist Annabelle Meare in its lineup, brought a further Scandinavian inflection with the performance of the Fourth Quartet by the Danish composer Poul Ruders, one of the anniversary commissions jointly funded by the Britten-Pears Foundation and the Royal Philharmonic Society, first aired by the Vertavo in London in March.

Ruders described his opening as a portal to the rest of the work, and its alternating jagged stabs and quiet questioning pauses are recurring elements in the sequence of five movements. While the hurtling pell-mell of both Scherzo and Presto provided a wild, often frenetic, counterbalance, it was the essentially searching nature of Ruders' central Adagio sognante and the final Adagio that imprinted itself on the ear. In these, the depiction of a liminal soundworld, with its haunting harmonics, was invested with a ghostly calm by the Vertavo.

It is the mark of truly fine musicians that a particular interpretation will colour the other works in their programme and, after the Ruders, the Vertavo brought a hushed, otherwordly, feel to the opening of Mozart's Dissonance Quartet. In a carefully understated way, the rest of the work took on an extra lightness and grace.

That muted quality was carried through to the Britten. Yet it was the sheer theatricality of the final Chacony that underlined the quartet's link with Peter Grimes, written just before it, and thus with one of Aldeburgh's connecting threads this year. The 21 variations on the Passacaglia are punctuated with cadenzas for cello, viola and violin in turn and these anguished outbursts were delivered with passionate conviction by the Vertavo players. It made for a forceful climax.

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