Though purists insist that Purcell's score for The Fairy Queen can only really be appreciated when it's heard in the context of the adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream for which it was conceived, the music alone still makes a satisfying enough concert package. The Edinburgh festival performance – a nod towards this year's 350th anniversary of Purcell's birth – came from Harry Christophers and The Sixteen, who introduced just enough entrances, exits and dramatic byplay to give a frisson of theatricality to these charming masques.

It was a pleasant if slightly low-key performance, though vocally and instrumentally it was first rate. Christophers ensured that the instrumental numbers had a good sinewy energy, and all of the soloists made the most of his or her party pieces. The bass Jonathan Best and counter-tenor Iestyn Davies camped up the dialogue of Coridon and Mopsa to the manner born, while James Gilchrist brought wonderful polish and verbal clarity to all the tenor numbers.

Earlier, another of this year's anniversaries had been duly acknowledged in the Emerson Quartet's morning recital to a packed Queen's Hall, which framed a rather brusque and uninvolving account of Beethoven's E flat Quartet Op 74 with two by Mendelssohn: the E flat Quartet Op 12 and the F minor Op 80. Both were svelte, beautifully shaped performances, yet neither really probed beneath the elegant surfaces to find anything more. The easy conversational unfoldings of Op 12 seemed concerned just with pleasantries, while the driving rhythms and anguished, tremolo-haunted textures of Op 80 were treated as an opportunity for flashy virtuosity rather than deeper psychological probing.