Festivals are usually celebratory occasions, but a bitter-sweet atmosphere hung over this concert, part of the Manchester International Cello festival, founded in 1988 by Ralph Kirshbaum. The concert was dedicated to Mstislav Rostropovich. However, the previous evening, Kirshbaum announced his intention to stand down as the festival's artistic director, a decision greeted with considerable sadness.

The concert, with Gianandrea Noseda conducting the BBC Philharmonic, consisted of four concertos by 20th-century English composers. The cello's ability to encapsulate heightened, tragic emotion made it a preferred instrument in a century of war, revolution and totalitarianism, and three of the four concertos effectively constitute musical responses to political convulsion.

The centrepiece was Elgar's Concerto, his tremendous elegy for a vanishing world, which Kirshbaum played in a performance of great nobility, grace and nostalgic sweetness. Britten's Symphony for Cello and Orchestra is darker and more uncompromising. Written for Rostropovich in 1963, it is a lean, spectral piece, at odds with Rostropovich's energetic personality. Natalia Gutman was the soloist, probing its shadowy world with grave brilliance, and Noseda examined its pungent textures, though neither could overcome its impenetrability.

The programme's comparative rarity was Frank Bridge's Oration, a harrowing, angry tribute to the first world war generation. It pitted the soloist - the outstanding Colin Carr - against grieving woodwind and mechanistic marches.

To remind us that the cello need not always be associated with tragic solemnity the evening closed with Yo-Yo Ma playing the Walton Concerto - the work of a master entertainer, performed by a virtuoso of infinite charm.