The Vale of Glamorgan festival's two orchestral evenings gave an interesting perspective on the blurring of boundaries between concertante and symphonic writing and on how composers use solo instruments as aural diversion and structural device.

Michael Daugherty's exuberant Sunset Strip places two solo trumpets antiphonally, to conjure effects by turn bright, moody and brilliant. In Elliott Carter's Oboe Concerto, the soloist is supported by a chorale of four violas and a percussionist. The intricate musical balance commanded attention throughout, the virtuosic writing realised in unassuming but highly expressive style by soloist David Cowley.

The premiere of the piano concerto fur by David Lang saw soloist Andrew Zolinsky's role reduced to that of another percussionist, needing celeste, glockenspiel and xylophone to highlight any contours. After such a vacuous score, Grant Llewellyn and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales made Michael Torke's crafty Ecstatic Orange Ballet, in which Stravinsky's ghost seemed to smile from the wind section, gloriously uplifting.

In the concert given by William Boughton's English Symphony Orchestra, with the Cardiff Ardwyn Singers conducted by Helena Braithwaite, the Vale festival's cello theme returned, this time fully justified in the person of Raphael Wallfisch. The setting of Llandaff Cathedral, with Jacob Epstein's iconic Majestas, suited the contemplative nature of both John Tavener's Eternal Memory, where the cello is set against orchestral texture, and his Syvasti, where its gentle declamation leads the chorus's responses.

This set the scene for festival director John Metcalf's new Cello Symphony, larger in scale and more rhapsodic than Tavener, but communicating with greatest immediacy in the high, sustained lyrical lines where Wallfisch's tone was radiant.