Andrew Johnstonereviews the performance by John O'Conor and the Vanbrugh Quartet at the National Gallery in Dublin

Two strands running through this autumn's tours by the RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet are Mozart's Haydn Quartets and the chamber music of Brahms. Quartets by Zemlinsky, Schumann and Beethoven respectively complete the three programmes.

This concert juxtaposed interpretations no less diversified than the works themselves. Levity was kept strictly in abeyance for the first movement of Mozart's Quartet No 15 in D minor, the players instead working up a richly serious yet apparently spontaneous discourse. A coaxing manner, though intriguing at first, almost got the better of the Andante, yet here, in the minuet and in the finale, the mood was appealingly pensive, the tone rounded.

John O'Conor supplied the mighty piano part for Brahms's turbulent Quintet in a reading that emphasised the work's more conspicuous angry side. The partnership was at its most effective in moments when the music flamed rather than merely smouldered - the more forcible portions of the first movement and scherzo, that is, and the searing presto that rounds off the finale.

The second movement, ambivalently marked Andante, un poco adagio, was motivated more by the former element than the latter. It might not have generated many tender feelings, but calmly held the attention.

Though it was much the most elusively abstract item, Zemlinsky's Quartet No 3 nonetheless induced the most uniformly successful playing. Its fastidious textures - notably the stammering utterances of the first movement - were realised with an easy elegance, while each strange harmonic shift was invested with a knowing energy.

A keen sense, too, of the broader contexts of tempo and dynamics kept architecture and expression in a poised, fulfilling equilibrium. Also at City Hall, Waterford, tomorrow