Corsham Festival 2007 culminated in triumphant form with a concert by the marvellous Smith Quartet at the Town Hall on Saturday night.

The concert was a singular highpoint in an altogether brilliant festival, featuring a world premier in a programme celebrating musical miminalism.

Minimalism, as it has developed over the last 30 years, is a term applied to music in which the composer may have deliberately limited his vocabulary in some way - perhaps in pitch or rhythm.

Sometimes it features repetition, or uses short musical phrases which gradually evolve and change.

The concert kicked off with Kevin Valans' String Quartet no 2, Hunting: Gathering, an evocative sound landscape tied together with a pulse but seemingly moving across places and cultures, with motifs reminiscent of folk music and even, extraordinarily, the playing of pipes.

Composer Andrew Poppy introduced the second piece Hatch commissioned by Corsham Festival and receiving its world premier on Saturday night.

His engaging work was dense with complex rhythms and circling patterns of sound.

Next came Buczak Quartet no 4 by the renowned Philip Glass. This beautiful work was played with an impressive dynamic range through the echoes, swells and reflecting patterns of sound.

After the interval Howard Skempton's Tendrils lost my attention after a time - perhaps its seeming formlessness is accurately reflected in its title.

Then the final piece, Michael Nyman's Harpsichord Concerto, featuring Jane Chapman on the harpsichord.

It is certainly a peculiar piece, wedding the historic harpsichord with this contemporary musical style. The rhythmic repetition and pulsing notes led to the harpsichord sounding almost like a machine: hypnotic but also powerful and emotive.

The Smith Quartet are breathtaking performers, playing with audacious dexterity, accuracy and unity. Their timing was little short of miraculous.

With Ian Humphries and Darragh Morgan on violin, Nic Pendlebury on Viola and Deirdre Cooper on cello, they have been at the forefront of contemporary music for nearly 20 years.

Nic Pendlebury's performance on the viola was particularly brilliant at Saturday's concert.