There is a difference between professional musicians who have played together for years and those who have not. Through constant practise and collaboration the former achieve a level where they not only are very comfortable as public performers, but also their music has a special synergy and mellowness.

It would therefore be unrealistic to expect the Bermuda musicians ? Melanie O?Brien and Caroline Gledhill (violins), Ros Hanson (viola) and Alison Johnstone (cello) ? despite their backgrounds and experience, to achieve the same standard, having only formed as a quartet a few months ago specifically for their Bermuda Festival appearance. So all credit to them for overcoming what appeared to be some understandable, initial first-night tentativeness and minor mistakes to ultimately end their programme with a very strong and confident performance of Borodin?s ?Quartet No. 2 in D major (1881)?.

This year?s traditional ?local act? of the Bermuda Festival opened with the very welcome return of pianist who is currently enrolled in the performance-intensive Graduate Diploma programme at the New England Conservatory of Music. Miss Wong is a brilliant young talent who plays with conviction and intelligence, and whose understanding of a composer?s intentions shines through her performance.

Nor does she shrink from the most demanding of works, of which Busoni?s famous piano arrangement of Bach?s ?D minor Chaconne for Violin? is one. An infant prodigy, this Italian pianist/composer was passionately interested in Bach?s works, of which he became best known as an editor and transcriber. Most of his piano music requires a virtuoso Lisztian technique, which also tells you something about Miss Wong.

The ?Chaconne? is a work of many hues, textures, and sudden changes of mood and pace. Mellifluous or musing, or crashing chords or delicate tracery ? the sum total became a well-reasoned, beautifully-wrought journey thanks to a gifted performer who always leaves us wanting more.

And more we got in the work which followed: Mozart?s (piano) ?Quartet in G minor KV 478?, in which Miss Wong joined Melanie O?Brien, Ros Hanson and Alison Johnstone. This was a performance in which the instrument sparkled and shone brightly against the more measured voices of the strings, who remained within their middle-register range. A ground-breaking work in its day, it still makes interesting listening, but here, as elsewhere in the programme, the absence of information on the various movements was a disadvantage, which of course also led to untimely applause.

With Borodin?s ?Quartet No. 2 in D major?, it was the turn of all four Menuhin Foundation string players to bring this programme to its conclusion. The programme description of this work as being of ?a narrow emotional outlook? which deftly avoided ?succumbling to sentimentality? was spot on. In fact, I was not alone among those wishing for a brighter, lighter conclusion to the evening.

Nonetheless, as much as the listener was challenged, so too were the musicians, and they not only handled it splendidly but also returned a performance that was as confident as it was impressive.