At birth they were called the Stillman Quartet, after their first violinist. Now the four former students of the Royal Northern College of Music label themselves the Barbirolli String Quartet, a proud Mancunian name. They received a deservedly warm welcome on Wednesday in the Park Lane Group's January bonanza of new talent and new music.

However crowded the field, there's always a place for classical musicians so tonally robust and rhythmically precise. The incisive, rocking patterns of Elizabeth Maconchy's short String Quartet No 13 exactly suited their gifts. Joe Cutler's recent Folk Music proved another canny match, vigorously chugging through riffs and stomps with an attractive populist bent.

The sonic tapestry widened in the major Barbirolli exhibit, Berio's Notturno of 1993; though this too came from the friendlier end of new music, with ghosts of melodies peeking in and out, and fetching crepuscular scurryings. Along with rhythmic precision, the Barbirollis' vast colour range proved vital here. I'd rush to hear this superb quartet again, even if they were called the Cat's Pyjamas.

In the concert following, not all the composers seemed the performers' friends. Edwin Roxburgh's gnarled cello partita of 1970 didn't seem worth the considerable effort, though, as in his other solo pieces, James Barralet's delivery supplied its own fascinations. How could such muscular expression arise from such a physically low-key performer? The head scarcely moved. He seemed frightened of his shadow. Of tortured faces there were none. No doubting the strength of feeling, though, from the desolate wastes of Britten's third suite to the febrile kaleidoscope of Kenneth Hesketh's Die hängende Figur ist Judas.

The other spotlit instrumentalists were the clarinettist Andrew Harper and pianist Joseph Middleton. In Timothy Salter's Mondrian Pictures and Brian Elias's Birds Practise Songs in Dreams (inspired by a science report in The Times), Harper revealed a stolid side, passing through notes without inflection. But Jonathan Harvey's clarinet-piano piece Be(com)ing gave us strength, variety and beauty, and you couldn't beat Brian Ferneyhough's bass clarinet blockbuster Time and Motion Study 1 for molten shrieks and burbles. Harper will be heard from again.

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