The Bath International Music Festival is one of those paying tribute to Sir Peter Maxwell Davies in his 80th birthday year. The actual day, 8 September, also is the date assigned to the birth of the Virgin Mary, and a plainsong proper to that day forms the basis of Davies's piano trio A Voyage to Fair Isle, begun on his birthday in 2002. It is less a musical conceit, more a quietly celebratory underlining of the work ethic that is fundamental to Davies's composition.

In the performance given by the Gould Piano Trio, it emerged as a piece of the most ravishing colours, its opening misty and mysterious, followed by outbursts of fierce, feverish passion. The tributes to the Fair Islanders' own traditions in the form of brilliantly worked cadenzas were delivered by the Goulds with a panache that was the perfect foil for the deep sensitivity of the more mournful passages. Davies appeared delighted, as well he might.

By way of complement, the Gould Trio gave the premiere of James MacMillan's Piano Trio No 2. Cast in one single movement, its initial fast and pounding rhythmic dynamic had an immediately arresting quality, with the piano writing, realised with resonant force by Benjamin Frith, propelling everything forward. Yet, the more reflective, keening mode of Lucy Gould's violin and Alice Neary's cello were so persuasively delivered as to make the return of the manic opening doubly effective.

Framing these two works were staples of the classical trio repertoire, Beethoven's trio Op121a – the Kakadu Variations, and Brahms's Trio in C major, Op 87. The Goulds found a wealth of expressive detail in individual melodic lines, but it is the collective intelligence and insight of their playing that is so impressive and the Brahms, in particular, was made to carry a positively symphonic intensity.

• The Bath International music festival continues until 26 May. Box office: 01225 463362.