Yuri Bashmet (viola), Mikhail Muntian (piano)

Yuri Bashmet was in subdued form for his celebrity concert at the National Concert Hall last night. His opening work, a transcription for viola and piano of Beethoven's Serenade for String Trio, may have been corrected and approved by the composer, but Bashmet didn't always manage to make the result sound fully convincing. In an uneven reading, it was the central Adagio which made the strongest impression.

If the Beethoven caused anyone to entertain doubts about the greatness of which Bashmet is capable, the opening movement of Hindemith's early Sonata for viola and piano (Op. 11 No. 4) will have banished them. This work from 1919 finds the soon-to-be enfant terrible composer showing his most ingratiating face, and the Bashmet/Muntian duo made the most of it.

The second half of the programme was dominated by arrangements. Brahms's FAE Scherzo misses the bite of the violin in the shift to viola and the harmonic heart of Ravel's Pavane pour une infante defunte simply stops beating when the piece is simplistically turned into a tune with accompaniment, no matter how sophisticated the colouristic resource that the tune is invested with.

The most successful of the transcriptions came from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, but even here the rhythmic elasticity adopted by Bashmet didn't always sit easily with the firmer motion favoured by his partner.

The closing item, Britten's Lachrymae, has featured in all of Bashmet's Dublin appearances, including his visit with the Moscow Soloists. This latest performance shared in the variable and often expressively muted character of the evening as a whole. It seems a shameful oversight at this stage to have had Bashmet in town on three separate occasions and never to have heard from him even one of the many works specially written for him, nor even a single piece later than 1950.