With American Independence Day falling on the first Saturday of the Cheltenham festival, the Smith Quartet's triptych of American quartets was aptly chosen and proved an potent antidote to the usual notions of star-spangled banner flying.

While George Crumb's Black Angels was inspired by Vietnam, its threnodies – a ghostly quotation of Schubert's Death and the Maiden Quartet included – are today all the more affecting for reflecting the continuing blight of war. The Smith Quartet's performance had a searing quality. The music was at times shocking in its violent aural onslaught, and at others it created a sound world – like the crystal glasses of water bowed to produce strangely beautiful, hypnotic resonances.

Steve Reich's quartet Different Trains was similarly thought-provoking, overlapping with one of the festival's overall themes: composers of Jewish heritage. The Smiths' amplification may have been a little overindulgent, but nothing could diminish the harrowing impact of the taped words of Holocaust survivors. Philip Glass's Fifth Quartet provided only temporary respite between such powerful works.

The Handel celebration, earlier in the evening, was a jollier affair, with a bewigged Harry Enfield portraying the composer – who had ventured to Cheltenham to take the spa waters. If Handel's life story was a bit laboured, the playing of 16 baroque trumpets and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment under Benedict Hoffnung was not, combining with the voices of the Oriel and St Cecilia Singers to make a cathedral of the Town Hall. More memorable still was the singing of Ruby Hughes, Neal Davies and Iestyn Davies. Countertenor Davies delivered arias that Handel wrote for the great castrati Nicolini and Senesino with laser precision and the most glorious tone.The festival continues until 18 July. Box office: 0744 576 7979.