Nowhere else in Britain on the night could there have been such a bounteous gathering of world-class musical talent as graced the platform at this concert.

Star fiddlers Maxim Vengerov and Joshua Bell both turned out to mark the start of the week-long Menuhin Competition to find young violinists who bestaspire to the heights of those titans.

In its 25th anniversary year, the competition has come to Cardiff for the first time, according the capital and its musical venues further international status.

Sadly and inexplicably, Vengerov never played a note, instead conducting Bell and the Competition Orchestra in the Tchaikovsky Concerto and, with a podium performance of thinly-disguised vaudeville, the overture to Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro.

A Welsh welcome was extended by the choir Serendipity, harpist Catrin Finch and 2000 Menuhin winner Akiko Ono with a first performance of Elegy for King Arthur, by Rhymney Valley composer Mervyn Burtch and librettist Mark Morris.

It was all rather bloodless and ultimately shed its elegiac pretensions. Perhaps the title could have been more illustrative.

So under-employed was Finch that she remained on stage for an unscheduled launch into Salzedo's Concert Fantasy on Lara's Granada, a crowd-pleaser if ever there was one.

The night belonged to Bell - and to the 2006 Menuhin winner, Armenian Hrachya Avanesyan, who gave rich-toned and searching performances of Ravel's Tzigane and JS Bach's Concerto for Two Violins (BWV 1043), partnering Ono.

The other conductors were Paul Watkins and Tim Rhys-Evans. Bell, in a performance of almost febrile intensity, brought the audience to its feet.