Bath’s annual celebration of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is itself celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. Amelia Freedman is artistic director both of this festival and of the Nash Ensemble, and this opening concert given by the ensemble’s string-players was a reflection of Freedman’s happy knack of creating programmes that are not obviously adventurous but turn out to be unexpectedly satisfying.

The starting point here was Mozart’s late quintet in D major, K593, known to have been played at a party gathering in Vienna in December 1790, with Mozart and Haydn taking it in turns to play the first viola part. Hearing Lawrence Power bring his ravishing viola tone and profound musical insight to those lines was one delight; another was the sense of Mozart consciously indulging in thematic playfulness and contrapuntal writing so as to pay the best possible compliment to Haydn, his first master in this regard.

In his string Quintet in E flat major, Op97, Dvořák followed Mozart’s example in using two violas, going even further in exploiting the depth of colour and timbre they offered. Dvořák also invoked the spirit of Haydn in the slow movement’s variations on a double theme, the balance of lyricism and poignancy realised with great feeling in this performance.

In the genius stakes, the only serious competition for Mozart was Felix Mendelssohn, who wrote his miraculous Octet at the age of 16. For this final work of the evening, the Nash players were joined by violinists David Adams and Michael Gurevich and cellist Bjørg Lewis to create a rich and luscious body of sound. The mercurial passagework and all the intricacies of the voice-leading were handled with great finesse, yet there was always a natural exuberance underlying everything. And, in retrospect, moments of perfection in an imperfect world.

• Bath MozartFest runs until 21 November. Box office: 01225 429750.