Monmouth Merlin Music began its 50th anniversary season with a recital far removed from the celebrity-packed programmes of its heyday over thirty years ago.

That was when a full membership and bulging finances enabled it to attract some of the world's great musicians to what is now the Blake Theatre and was then the assembly hall of Haberdashers’ Monmouth School.

Not that this acknowledged pedigree affected pianist Richard Ormrod and violinist Christopher Horner and their status as heirs to a glittering tradition unlikely to be repeated. Perhaps when the Merlin was inviting to Monmouth musicians such as Jacqueline du Pré, Louis Kentner, Yehudi Menuhin, Benjamin Britten and Janet Baker, others with less pulling power never got a chance to show what they were capable of.

Ormrod and Horner are both teachers as well as concert musicians and their programme of Beethoven's Sonata No 4, Ravel's Sonata in G, a transcription of six of de Falla's Seven Popular Spanish Songs and Brahms's Sonata No 2 drew from them considered if not exactly scintillating playing.

They might have made more of Beethoven's playful exchanges and Brahms's unabashed and ever-broadening radiance. Ravel's idiosyncrasies seemed to be just that and though Pavel Kochanski gave extra music to the violin in transcribing the de Falla songs as well as handing it the original vocal line, the fiddle does not offer the expressive character of the voice.

Some good, competent duo playing here but also some missed opportunities - and an inkling for this writer at least that these two were not always sharing the same wavelength.