The Royal Northern College of Music's international cello festival is now a flourishing institution in Manchester. This year it has commissioned five new works and there will be three European premieres of music by North and South American composers. With very few exceptions, this is a celebration of cello music that is firmly centred on the past 100 years, partly reflecting this year's American bias.
The two big orchestral concerts - the second of which is tomorrow night - offer a priceless opportunity to hear some of the world's greatest cellists lined up one after another. But anyone hoping to hear Elgar, Schumann or Shostakovich might well be disappointed: with the sole exception of the Dvorak, the most popular concertos have been rigorously eliminated from this year's programme.
What is left after the cull is an uneven but fascinating mixture. Victor Herbert's Second Concerto of 1894, which opened the festival, is a cellist's cello concerto: luxuriant, impassioned and so beautifully written for the instrument that its musical weaknesses shrink into insignificance. In Raphael Wallfisch's hands, it blossomed so gratefully that its neglect suddenly seemed a terrible injustice.
Others had less to work with. In what was his only performance in the festival, Janos Starker gave an impassive account of Dohnanyi's already uninspiring Concertstucke. Bernstein's Meditations are more seriously below par. They were beautifully played by the Canadian cellist Gary Hoffman, but ultimately unsalvageable.
The remaining works were rather more substantial. Boris Pergamenschikow was a dedicated soloist in Hindemith's rather hard-line Concerto, and Danish cellist Erling Blondal Bengtsson gave a veteran performance of the Walton, which he premiered in Manchester in 1958.
Listening to the BBC Philharmonic at full throttle in the 400-seater RNCM concert hall is the live equivalent of sitting in front of the hi-fi with the volume up: it is exciting in a way, but not without its problems. On this occasion, coordination was a serious issue, which it isn't usually with this orchestra. Whether this was due to a problem with the conductor or the acoustic is impossible to say.
The RNCM Cello Festival ends Sunday. Box office: 0161-907 5278.
