The Brodsky Quartet, Theatre by the Lake, Keswick

Daniel Rowland, on the set of A Shepherd's Life, stood before a backdrop of the fells under the red of a fading sunset, a fiddler at a shepherds meet. Stepping forward, he swept his bow across his violin and the Brodsky Quartet were away vying with each other in a frenetic Scherzo by Borodin. It was one of his Friday night pieces from Les Vendredis, supposed, incredibly, to be played at sight by amateurs. The Brodskys are no amateurs - they're one of the world's greatest quartets; they've been in the business for over forty years - and they played this maddeningly difficult piece with the assured, escalating frenzy of a Russian folk dance.

In Russia in the summer of 1944, as the tide of war turned after the desolation of Leningrad, Dmitri Shostakovich wrote his Second String Quartet. The energetic first violin led with a triumphant theme – Daniel Rowland again, stepping forward, his body bending, almost dancing, accompanied by the resonant cello of Jacqueline Thomas. In the second movement, he seemed a lone voice, for a moment lark-like, singing above the quiet, vibrant chords of cello, viola and violin, the voice of an individual, passionate, troubled, expressive.

All was muted, menacing, disturbing in the waltz movement which followed, and then, in the variation movement, the violin and cello, playing adagio, echoed one another, before Paul Cassidy's viola, unaccompanied, sang the theme. Ian Belton took it up on the second violin and the variations became increasingly faster and fragmented, until the final, slower, seemingly confident chords.

For a moment, there was not a sound. The audience appeared stunned by the courage and the nakedness of the music.

Nothing could follow. But it did. Beethoven's Opus 131, written in his last years, his years of deafness when his music seemed the unmediated expression of his soul. If Shostakovich was a solitary voice, the voices in the Beethoven spoke together, expressive of the profoundest feelings or dancing with a hard won joyousness which moved one to tears.

The music was the equal of the fading sunset and the sublimity of the fells.

Steve Matthews