The opening concert of the Swansea festival, with the London Chamber Orchestra under the baton of Christopher Warren-Green, was a rather uneven affair. Mozart's overture to Cosi Fan Tutte was unexceptionable, which, in retrospect, seemed a desirable quality. Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, ostensibly the climax to the evening, was hasty, often noisy, with no defining logic and best glossed over here.

Yet there was never any question that the performance of the evening would be that of the Brahms Concerto for violin and cello, with soloists Antje Weithaas and Paul Watkins. This was the work in which Brahms extended the hand of friendship once more to the violinist Joseph Joachim after a six-year rift, but while the lyrical interplay can be taken to represent reconciliation and warm discourse, it was the fine balance between the intimacy of chamber music and outbursts of a more symphonic style that emerged clearly here.

All the impulse for this interpretation appeared to come from Watkins. His grasp of structure, and of the crucial relationship between passion and precision, was strong and instinctive, but as his wondrous cello tone sang out it demanded a similarly warm response from Weithaas.

It was revealing to get a different perspective on Watkins' musicianship the following night, when he played the same work with the Brandon Hill Chamber Orchestra at St George's Bristol, this time directing the concerto from the cello. He was partnered by Marianne Thorsen (his colleague from the Nash Ensemble) in what was an even more intimate reading in some respects - as befitted the venue. But Watkins displayed a natural command, and a capacity for an infinite variety of expression - conveyed with eyes, hands, body and bow and not a trace of ego or pretension.