Strings Attached is a new society aiming to bring quality chamber music to Brighton and Hove, and it certainly fulfilled this in its inaugural concert by the Chilingirian Quartet at the Corn Exchange.

The Chilingirian Quartet are celebrating 40 years of music making, and for most of that time they have been regarded as a leading quartet, equally at home in Classical period and modern quartets.

Their versatility was shown here by their fine and seemingly effortless playing of Mozart's A major quartet (K464) followed by an intense and passionate performance of Maurice Ravel's Quartet in F.

Mozart's quartet is one of six written in the early 1780s and dedicated to his mentor Haydn, who regarded it as the best of all Mozart's quartets. Beethoven was also especially impressed by this quartet which takes a classical form but transforms it with originality and subtlety of expression which the Chilingirian quartet conveyed with enviable fluency.

By contrast, Ravel's only quartet, written in 1902-03, seems at times bleak and even anguished. The quartet's leader, Levon Chilingirian, introduced it as a “miracle” and said it is demanding to play; the players could do with being able to use all five fingers on the strings as some passages might have been composed for keyboard. There are long and rapid pizzicato passages - in which all digits on one hand could be employed - and complex rhythms. The music demands rapid changes of tempo and mood but the Chilingirian quartet were equal to its demands.

As an encore, the Chilingirian returned to Mozart for the joyous Minuet and Trio from his K449 quartet.