ON paper, Wednesday’s was a programme of the highest order: a trilogy of bona fide chamber music masterpieces. Indeed, it was hard not to wonder if the Sacconi Quartet – now in its thirteenth year – had set itself up for a fall. Where to start with music so heavily emblazoned with the interpretive stamps of the greats?

The answer, it emerged, was to approach the music from an altogether different slant. Haydn’s F-minor trendsetter was characterised by a thoughtful freedom, improvisatory flashes doing little to mask the work’s inherent urgency. The ensemble’s inclination to look before it leapt transformed the piece from impassioned assertion to doubt-riddled question mark.

But it was Ravel’s 1903 quartet that really caught fire. Shrugging off the dream-like haze of the opening, the Sacconi’s soft-edged sound found no end of leg-room in the composer’s shimmering textures.

A second-movement of wide-eyed ferocity paved the way for the eye of the storm, a slow movement of moving sincerity; the ensuing finale practically pinned you to your seat. Ravel’s details were realised with IMAX-worthy clarity, but it was the sweeping whole that gave everyone something to marvel at in the interval.

The group’s fearlessness with ultra-quiet dynamics then enabled an enigmatic reading of Beethoven’s paradoxical A-minor late quartet.

True, it lacked polish in places, a couple of notorious passages just eluding the grasp of the players. But how the expansive ‘prayer of thanksgiving’ at the work’s core soared! An emotional outpouring that left the Lyons holding its breath: timelessness achieved.

- Richard Powell