Two more self-effacing performers than Alexandra Wood and Huw Watkins could scarcely be found. Yet such is the dynamic and depth of musicianship they bring to their violin and piano partnership that every note is invested with a burning commitment. It made for riveting listening in this Cardiff University leg of the British Music Information Centre's Cutting Edge tour.

By way of introduction, the duo played Watkins' own set of two pieces, Coruscation and Reflection, dating from 1999 - the first indeed brilliant and coruscating, the second elegantly pensive. They served not only as a reminder of Watkins' precocious talent but to set up a sequence of works in a pair of movements by Luciano Berio, Colin Matthews, Arlene Sierra and Anthony Powers respectively. It was a strong argument for the two-movement form as more cogent and succinct than the sonata, with a formidable variety of moods and structural techniques. In the first of Berio's early Due Pezzi, the explosive force which grows from the gentle opening and fades again was expertly handled by Wood and Watkins, as was the spiky wit of the second. Colin Matthews' Chaconne with Chorale created a wonderful aura, with Moto Perpetuo the sparkling sequel.

Arlene Sierra's A Conflict of Opposites had a persuasive first movement, with the conflicting modes implied in the title expressively juxtaposed. The progress of the second, a dance, was more laboured, though it ended perfectly convincingly. In Sunlight by Anthony Powers concerned itself with the opposing qualities of dazzling light and languid haze, most eloquently expressed in the second movement's tightly crafted double variations. Stravinsky's Due Concertante and suites by Goehr and Britten completed this unexpected gem of a concert.