Milhaud wrote his jazzy ballet, La création du monde, and his neo-classical String Quartet No 6 within a year of each other, but it is not easy to see any connection between the two. The demure performance of the latter by the Vanbrugh Quartet, in the John Field Room of the National Concert Hall last Sunday, tended to smooth out any rough edges of character and if there were fires below the surface, they did not break through.

String Quartet No 6, Op 77.....................................................Milhaud

String Quartet in D, Op 18, No 3........................................Beethoven

Piano Quintet in A, Op 81........................................................Dvorak

Beethoven's early set of string quartets is full of pointers to the later sets. The polish and accomplishment of the writing is continually disturbed by dramatic irruptions; the composer has some urgent message that overrides good manners. The Vanbrugh, though faithful to the general air of refinement, somehow missed out on the urgency, giving a performance that would probably have pleased Beethoven's patrons more than the audiences of this century.

Dvorak's Quintet can sink under the weight of its own sweetness, but there was no danger of that with Finghin Collins at the piano. His vigorous and crisply articulated playing energised the whole ensemble so that the five players moved through the music with irresistible impetus, shedding mere carefulness and winning through to an assured richness of sound and feeling.

There was no loss of accuracy, but instead a rare sense of exhilaration, of risks successfully taken.