The idea of a series of chamber music concerts by soloists from the NSO is good enough to deserve better programming than that served up by clarinettist John Finucane and harpist Andreja Malir on Monday.

It's been a long time since I've listened to two of our leading instrumentalists work their way, straight-faced, through so much rubbishy music in a single evening. Iwan Muller (1786-1854) and Ekaterina Walter-Kune (1870-1930), the one a man of the clarinet the other a woman of the harp, are clearly composers to be given a wide berth, unless you have a fondness for vacuously strung-out, note-rich pieces of the feeblest invention. The more recent (1976) clarinet and harp Pastorale of the equally obscure Michael Amorosi descended, if you can imagine it, even lower, to a mind-numbing level of threadbarest kitsch.

Bassi's florid Fantasia on themes from Bellini's I Puritani does at least present technical challenges which can be rewardingly resolved by a player of Finucane's undoubted abilities. And it was interesting to find the normally reactionary-sounding tendencies of Hollywood composer Miklos Rozsa being aired through his Clarinet Sonatina of 1951 in a context which made them sound uncommonly forward-looking.

The two other more serious works, by Jean-Dominique Krynen and Jean-Michel Damase, made less of an impression in an evening which floundered musically in spite of the accomplishment of the playing.