It was heartening for Dolgellau Music Club to have a full house in Coleg Meirion-Dwyfor on 7 March for a special concert in memory of club member Hilary Jones.

Her son Martin Gwilym-Jones, Sub-Leader of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and a Professor of violin at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, came together with fellow members of BBC NOW to form the MacFeaverJones String Quartet especially for this event.

Over £600 was raised in support of the Addison's Disease Self-Help Group, a charity of immense value to Hilary once (late in life) her condition had been properly diagnosed, as Martin revealed in a short address.

Schubert and Mozart were two of Hilary's favourite composers, and both featured prominently. The former's 'Rosemunde' Quartet in A minor Op. 29 No. 1 contains some of his loveliest music, not least in the haunting andante that gives the piece its label (from theme music for a now forgotten play). No one does hiraeth, or yearning, quite like Schubert, whereby passages in the major can somehow seem even more poignant than those in the minor. The quartet brought these contrasts out to the full.

There was longing too in Mozart's concert aria “Mentre ti lascio, oh figlia” K513 ('As I leave you, oh daughter'), a lament on the part of the captured Darius King of Persia (defeated by Alexander the Great), magnificently performed by baritone Thomas Coltman against the quartet's backing in his own arrangement of the orchestral score. Martin's BBC NOW companions Juan Gonzalez (violin) Tetsuumi Nagata (viola) and Jessica Feaver (cello) are all senior members of their sections, and their rich and powerful tone amply supplied the colours needed to endorse the singer's moving utterances, building to 'Ah, mi si spezza il cor! Ah, my heart is breaking!'.

The same combination provided an eloquent opening to the second half in the form of Samuel Barber's Op. 3 setting of Matthew Arnold's 1850 poem 'Dover Beach', still relevant today, about the shrinking of the Sea of Faith seen as waves retreating down the 'naked shingles of the world'. Sadness is for a while transcended at the climax, strongly realised by Thomas and the quartet – 'Ah, love, let us be true to one another!'

Mendelssohn's early Quartet in A minor Op. 13 deserves to be heard much more often, and made an uplifting ending to the programme. The delicate fast music in the Intermezzo movement, reminiscent of the sprightly scherzo in Mendelssohn's writing for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, showed the players' virtuosity and mastery in creating a range of textures. Martin's brilliance was to the fore in the final Presto, and Juan and Tetsuumi brought out every nuance of their inner parts; Jessica's underpinning bass was impeccable throughout. Crowned by Thomas's heroic and expressive singing, this was an occasion that amply fulfilled all hopes and expectations.