A blessing for Cheltenham

Nicola Benedetti performs a lot at this year's music festival, swelling the coffers nicely as a result. Her reputation is well founded on the evidence of tonight's concert in a packed  Town Hall: I haven't heard such compelling chamber music-making in a long while. Even the long Brahms Quartet at the outset more or less held my attention. A new work for piano trio by Arlene Sierra followed, helpfully trailed by the composer in an interview with the cellist. After the interval came the Shostakovich Piano Quintet, a thrilling performance!

Competition

We picnicked at Guiting Power on Friday night, before the opening concert of its annual music festival: not exactly Glyndebourne-come-to-Gloucestershire, but pretty perfect on a sunlit evening. On previous occasions we have used the one and only table, stationed by the swings, but this year it had been spirited away - I spotted it, across by the Hall: though we were there early, I felt that its removal might not go unremarked. Anyway the rug was all that was really needed.

Probyn Miers, Chairman of the Festival committee, thanked the audience for turning out despite the "competition" elsewhere. But was this really necessary, given the quality of what was respectively on offer - at Guiting and in the Olympic stadium?

In the intimate surroundings of Guiting Village Hall, Joanna MacGregor gave us characterful takes on two contrasting Beethoven sonatas - the Pastorale and Waldstein; and then joined with the Heath Quartet for the always thrilling Shostakovich piano quintet. High definition performances. In Stratford East - we caught up with the ceremony on the iPlayer this afternoon - Danny Boyle laid on his spectacularly quirky melange of Britishness to precede the athletes' parade etc. - an incredibly-long drawn out affair, which must have exhausted everyone in the arena, participators and spectators alike. It was certainly amusing in parts, but it tired me out, watching it even with the benefit of the fast forward facility.

At the back of my mind was the ever-resent [I'm leaving this typo: too good to change] thought: this ceremony has set us back £27m. Jonathon Porritt, Chair of the London 2012 Sustainability Ambassadors, happened to be dining here last night: he was at pains to set the minds of those of us present at rest about the Games' overall... sustainability - given that we accept the Olympics are a good thing in principle.

The Romans were appeased by panem et circenses, bread and circuses: for us it's circuses, sponsored by McDonalds. Those without bread will have to await David Cameron's Hunger Summit.

Carducci Quartet

My enthusiasm for this still-young quartet (led by Matthew Denton) has been voiced before, and it's none the less intense following this evening's performance at Dean Close School, where they have been "in residence" since the beginning of the year. Drab decor and distracting piles of scores in the background of the Prince Michael Hall couldn't take away from a vibrant performance - of what was a challenging programme.

It began with a quartet by Philip Glass: it had been described, Matthew said, as Rock music for Buddhists. The opening movement of this, his 4th Quartet rocked, but more in the sense of a lullaby - as if Bach might have been looking over the composer's shoulder. The real rock music came after the interval, with the Allegretto furioso of Shostakovich's 10th Quartet.

In between, we heard a couple of minimalist jewels (Kurtág and Webern), and a surprisingly enjoyable work, inspired by Australian birdsong, by David Matthews: he was there to introduce it himself, whistling us a preview of each of the motifs. I liked the idea of the Australian cuckoo singing the same interval as ours, but upside down. And particularly appropriate to hear this piece at a time of year when our garden is more or less a song-free zone.

Leopold/Wolfgang, Fanny/Felix, and Colin/David. I can't think of many other musical family pairs apart from these three Ms, Mozart, Mendelssohn - and Matthews.

Small but perfectly formed

The Presteigne Festival is tiny compared to most, yet attracts musicians of the highest calibre over its six days. We came in towards the end, for a chamber concert presented by five young and highly talented women. Amongst them were the violinist Sara Trickey, who stayed with us a few years ago when she was playing at Cheltenham, and pianist/composer Alissa Firsova: she has also played at the Cheltenham Festival, and her lively piece (in memory of Shostakovich) opened the second half of last night's eclectic recital. Sitting in the South aisle of St Andrew's Church, I had an excellent view, both of the performers and of the beautiful early 16th Century Flemish tapestry depicting Christ's Entry into Jerusalem, which hangs on the North wall.

It was impressive to see rubbish being collected in Presteigne on a Bank Holiday Monday, and also to see a device of such Heath Robinson appearance, by comparison - that is - to the mobile refuse machines which grind and whirr round Cheltenham.

Carducci concert

At this morning's Cheltenham Festival recital by the Carducci Quartet, I sat next to a Sixth Form pupil from Dean Close: it is the quartet-in-residence there, a great boost to the school's budding string players, much as the Tewkesbury Abbey "residency" is for the school's young singers.

The programme included the European premier of a Festival commission, Arlene Sierra's Insects in Amber. I am not greatly in favour of programme music, such as this was, but I have certainly endured less pleasant quarters of an hour at previous Festval premiers. The performances of Shostakovich's 8th Quartet and Dvořák's American were excellent, and sent me off in a good humour.

Normally, we are in the cheap seats at the back of the hall - excellent acoustics there - but today I was able to sit close enough to take a photograph (at the end of the new work) because we were the guests of the Summerfield Charitable Trust: it had made the Quartet a grant in the past. The Trust was launching an initiative, seeking to add to its endowment by entertaining a cross-section of the town's lawyers and accountants, so we all went on to a jolly lunch in the Royal Box at Cheltenham Racecourse - one of the perks from Edward Gillespie having taken over as the Trust's Chairman.

The Borodin sound

A legend in its field, the Borodin String Quartet has been playing to a packed Pittville Pump Room this evening. The Quartet's formation during the latter years of World War II coincided with our first Cheltenham Music Festival. The present four are inheritors of a great tradition: you could tell it - even from the back of the hall - from their first appearance. But the playing too was distinctive: a sedate, oddly humourless Haydn ("the Bird"), monumental early Beethoven (Op 18(1): what a first movement that has!), and some memorable Shostakovich - if that's your bag: I'm afraid it's not mine, at least when it comes to Quartet no 3. Perhaps it was the glass of wine I had in the interval.

Coming home towards 10 p.m., after all the rain we had a still-bright sky behind us and steely greyness ahead. The white terraced fronts of All Saints Road took on a spooky look: Alfred Hitchcock would have loved it.