Part of the secret of any festival is matching music to venue and, in principle, Gloucester cathedral offered the perfect setting for Holst, Vaughan-Willams and Elgar. The only caveat was the highly reverberant acoustic, but conductor Richard Hickox's undaunted approach with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales may indeed have been the most pragmatic.

In a quintessentially English programme Michael Berkeley's Tristessa fitted well, as this is the tradition in which he has his roots. His lyrical instinct seems to aspire to an earlier time, and it was the intertwining of Celia Craig's cor anglais and Steven Burnard's viola that was striking here. The tone-poem was conceived as a memorial to Berkeley's close friend, the writer Angela Carter. Rather than mournful sadness, it has a more conscious, soul-searching feel, and any sense of conflict between the soloists with the orchestra is avoided. The moment, towards the end of the work, when the cor anglais connected with the oboe achieved a particular emotional clarity.

Gloucester's boy choristers, ranged high along the organ loft, gave a bright clear edge to the sound of the BBC National Chorus in Holst's Hymn to Jesus. Similarly, Hickox used the cathedral's architecture to bring a new dimension to Vaughan-Williams's Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis. The composer requires two ensembles, and Hickox positioned his second group of strings almost out of sight. They became a ghostly consort of viols. Contrasted with the glowing tone from the quartet of principal strings in the main body of players, it was a ploy that almost worked, but somehow the music's overall integrity was compromised. In recompense, the full orchestra gave a very full-blooded account of Elgar's Enigma Variations to close.

· The Cheltenham festival runs until Sunday. Box office: 01242 227979.