Beware of exclamation marks! A cry for freedom that embodies the affectionate diminutive of the name Mstislav was also the signal for a gala memorial tribute to the great cellist Rostropovich. It promised rather more than it delivered. No sign of the violinist Julian Rachlin and the pianist Itamar Golan as promised; and only one real four-star performance.

Perhaps the echo of Rostropovich's own musicianship still rang too loud. But the single performance that really caught fire was that by Mischa and Lily Maisky, of Shostakovich's Cello Sonata in D minor - a work that had been played by Rostropovich and the composer himself. Maisky searched for the volatile flicker and flame of emotion within his fast vibrato, tearing at the heart of the cello and of the score, with his 21-year-old daughter a formidable partner at the piano.

Sparks had been kindled at the start of the evening in a toe-tapping performance of Prokofiev's Overture on Hebrew Themes by a sextet of past and present members of the London Symphony Orchestra, with Jonathan Papp at the piano. His silvery playing made each song sung by Elena Prokina seem fragile and moonlit: Glinka, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov were artfully moulded, though their passion was that of artifice.

Either side of the interval came a dour, craggy performance of Britten's Sonata for Cello and Piano from Natalia Gutman and Ian Brown, commemorating another resonant musical partnership - and then Penderecki's little tribute, Per Slava, in an eloquent solo from Ivan Monighetti.

The evening ended with A Musical Surprise!, a concert waltz for cello quartet by Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Fitzenhagen, to whom Tchaikovsky had dedicated his Variations on a Rococo Theme. It was played with something less than panache by Karine Georgian, Natalia Gutman, Mischa Maisky and Ivan Monighetti - and then solemnly repeated as an encore.

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