This year marks the centenary of the death of Antonin Dvorak, and his String Quartet in A flat was the main focus of this concert given by the brilliant young Karol Szymanowki Quartet.

Exile was an unstated theme of their programme, and this work, begun in the US in 1895 but completed back home in Bohemia, reflects that emotional tenor, where nostalgia is moderated by hope. The Szymanowkis were meticulous in their attention to the subtleties of Dvorak's rhythm, but it was in the elegant simplicity of the slow movement that their prodigious gift shone through, the expressive style reaching a Schubertian intensity. If the quartet was less than totally focused in the buoyant finale, the intrusion of a shrill ring- tone in the auditorium was probably to blame.

Their opening piece, by the Russian-born Australian Elena Kats-Chernin, was a failure. The eclectic, theatrical style of her small-scale pieces can put fizzy exclamation marks into proceedings, but that didn't happen here. For Rosa was written in memory of an inspiring fellow-emigré whose Polish origin accounted for the connection with the Szymanowskis. Over the span of its single movement, little seemed to have been conceived in quartet idiom and, while the folk-style material threw out the occasional spark, nothing actually caught light. Indeed, so insubstantial was the work's conclusion that it didn't so much end as fall apart. Poor Rosa.

To make up, the Szymanowskis played Shostakovich's witty Polka, faces straight as practised comedians. Their second encore, the Adagio from Haydn's Quartet Op 54 No 1, simply exquisite both in tone-colour and in feeling, underlined once more just what collective artistry this quartet represents. It also salvaged an occasion they - and we - might otherwise have preferred to forget.