A museum of music reproducing instruments sits in a modern block by the Thames at Brentford, London. It’s the Musical Museum and within its confines are orchestrions, barrel organs, player pianos, violanos, gramophones and even a mighty Wurlitzer.

This fascinating collection of pre-digital music reproductive apparatus was founded in 1963 by Frank Holland who discovered a nearby disused church to house it. We remember visiting the museum many years ago in its former cramped ex-ecclesiastical setting. In 2008 it found a new home in the more spacious purpose built building nearby, gaining in presentation what it lost in quaintness.

Before attending the museum’s concert last night we were able to take a quick look at its contents. The His Master’s Voice terrier and other delightful animals especially grabbed our attention.

I was reminded that an old school-friend who played the bassoon in the school orchestra and later in life became the world authority on the Pianola – Rex Lawson – had worked at the Musical Museum.

What was played at the concert? Perhaps the most sublime music ever composed: a late Beethoven quartet. Op 130 is characterized by an alternative ending, the last piece the now totally deaf composer wrote. A restless first movement, a sprightly scherzo encored at the quartet’s first performance in 1827 a couple of months after the great man had died, an elegant andante, a child-like German dance, a transcendent cavatina, the term given to a simple song but here applied to a paradisiacal prayer which drew tears from Beethoven and, indeed, from anyone of sensibility who listens to it; five wonderfully teeming movements finaled by what? That was the question to be discussed in this concert.

Beethoven’s original finale was deemed too long, too complex by his publishers in the first quartet to have six movements (instead of the usual four). So Ludwig replaced it with a brilliantly playful one with absolutely no hint in its mood that its creator would soon expire.

The first half of the concert, which was preceded by an illuminating talk on the work, consisted of a performance of this revised version played by the Maiastra quartet. I’d never heard of these artistes before but by the end of their playing I had become completely convinced of their excellence. Intonation, dynamics, expression, balance were all A1. Knowing renderings of this heavenly piece by other quartets I could not have wished for better. Incidentally a Maiastra is a mythical golden bird from Rumania which can tell fortune and cure the blind. Brancusi, another Rumanian, did a wonderful set of sculptures representing the Maiastra.

The second half of this concert consisted of the first five movements played again but this time followed by the original finale, perhaps the greatest, certainly the most way-out chamber music ever created. None other than the Grosse Fuge, the ‘Great Fugue’. With more bars than the previous five movements put together this master-work develops a familiar fugue subject in six sections going from colossal rhythmic complexity to the most humourous banter ever elicited from such a severe form as the fugue.

The energy this music generated was awesome. Exhilarating exhaustion in the notes with equal energy in the playing. To play op. 130 twice over in an evening and conclude with the most difficult, both to hear and to play, chamber music creation of all time was a remarkable achievement. It was also a great idea! Not only did we get the full versions of this quartet but also we were able, through the repetition of five of its movements, to more fully appreciate the way this marvellous music was put together.

We have only been twice to attend concerts at the Musical Museum. The first was to hear that doyen of dance bands for our time, Alex Mendham. The second was last night’s Maiastra Beethoven quartet performance. No two sorts of music could be more different from each other. Yet in both cases they were united by the highest quality of playing from their respective artistes.

It’s fantastic that in an era where methods of music reproducing have evolved well beyond much of that displayed in the Brentford museum we are able to attend live music played supremely. And all this for free (donations gratefully received of course).