Finland and the Far East were the focus for this year's RNCM International Cello Festival, though the two major orchestral concerts with the BBC Philharmonic mainly showcased Finnish works. Toru Takemitsu's Orion and Pleiades was the sole exception. It is too diffuse and rambling to justify its length, but the outstanding Japanese cellist Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi played it with compelling dedication.

Of the contemporary works, Finnish composer Kalevi Aho's Double Cello Concerto was the highlight. Aho's style is hard to pin down, but there is something distinctly post-Mahlerian about the intense expressive force of his sound. Frans Helmerson and Jan-Erik Gustafsson were beautifully matched, especially in the close-knit dialogue of their shared cadenza. Though a much tougher piece, Magnus Lindberg's Cello Concerto explored the gentler regions of the cello sound with a cadenza of breathtaking delicacy in which its dedicatee, Anssi Karttunen, held the audience spellbound.

The post-Sibelius generation of Finnish composers was represented by Joonas Kokkonen's Cello Concerto, played by the cellist who inspired it, Arto Noras. Though dating from 1969, it never breaks entirely free from its rather worthy academic idiom, with a freely rhapsodic slow movement followed obligingly by a whimsical scherzo.

Penderecki's recent Concerto Grosso for three cellos - conducted by the composer - was surprisingly staid. Its Shostakovichian gestures of aggression were rather limply realised. But the Concerto wound down in a elegiac sequence of solos beautifully played by the BBC Philharmonic and the three soloists Franz Helmerson, Lluis Claret and Claudio Bohorquez.