Cosmopolitan Quartet, Reid Concert Hall, Edinburgh

As a collaboration between Armenia, Hungary, South Africa and France, the Cosmopolitan Quartet lives up to its name. It is also, in this respect, a now typical product of the Royal (and increasingly international) Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, where its members have been studying. Their state of progress in Glasgow was exemplified by the lucid and moving account of Britten's Quartet No 3, which ended this lunchtime concert in Edinburgh. Britten's last major - and consciously valedictory - composition has long held a special place in his output. First performed 15 days after his death, it remains the most eloquent of farewells, its finale a picture of Venice, of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice (which was the subject of his last opera) and of the calm, yet not untroubled, undulation of the sea that inspired so much of his music. The players caught its imagery to a nicety, not only in the finale, where they made it speak tenderly, but in some way in all five of its movements. The spirit of the score was sustained from start to finish.