Britten and Brahms make an unlikely pairing. Britten disliked Brahms’s music, although he periodically re-read his scores to check he hadn’t missed something. The contrast between their musical personalities was clearly illustrated in the Heath Quartet’s Coffee Concert.

Britten’s first string quartet opened the programme. It is an early piece, written in 1941 during his stay in the US, and is full of dark brooding and inner turmoil. Only in the final brief movement does the mood lift. When he wrote it the young composer was growing disillusioned with America and homesick for Britain, which was at its darkest wartime hour. This performance engaged and moved me. The musicians played with deep emotional understanding, bringing an intense, visceral quality to the music. All of Britten’s work has an anguished sadness at its heart.

The Brahms String Quintet Op.111 which followed is very different. Brahms intended it as a farewell piece. Here is a man looking back on life with an undimmed enthusiasm. The passion and energy of the playing stayed with me all day. There is perhaps more melancholy in the middle two movements than this performance chose to explore, but the playing was full of feeling. The frenetic dance at the end was superb. Oliver Heath on first violin played with vitality and confidence, and his colleagues responded warmly to his lead. Adam Newman, viola, joined them for the Brahms.

The Heath Quartet was formed in 2002 when the members were students at the Royal Northern College of Music. Over the last few years they have won prizes in a number of international competitions and now give recitals around the world.

The quartet will be in Oxford again tomorrow at the Jacqueline du Pré Music Building and will give a second Coffee Concert on March 13 featuring Haydn and Dvorak. For more details see www.coffeeconcerts.co.uk