Back in the bad old days, solo players would always get star billing, their accompanist - the very word implies inferiority - relegated to a supporting role.

"At the piano was Joe Bloggs," we might read at the end. Today such duos are rightly regarded as a partnership of equals.

Last autumn, Victoria Simonsen forsook her orchestral life, as principal cellist with Opera North, to venture out on her own as a chamber musician.

Ben Powell seems to have come from the opposite direction, a solo pianist turned to ensemble work.

This may help to explain why they took most of their Friday recital to find a genuine meeting of minds, in music by Janácek, Schumann, Debussy and Shostakovich for the British Music Society.

Miss Simonsen's undercooked pizzicatos in Janácek's Pohádka (Fairy Tale) foreshadowed some tense phrasing, while the piano rarely rose above the innocuous.

Schumann's autumnal Five Pieces (1849) needed much riper cello legato.

Arguably the piano, whose lid should probably have been only on the short stick, was still too loud in the Debussy sonata.

But again Miss Simonsen failed to stamp her personality on music that repeatedly demands animation, not caution.

There were some nicely shaded contrasts by both players at the start of the Shostakovich sonata and a crisp second movement.

Miss Simonsen finally let her hair down in the finale, encouraged by Mr Powell's rampant attack. But this was never a tight-knit duo.