Pianist-composer John McCabe's new horn concerto - written in memory of Ifor James and premiered in this concert by David Pyatt and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales - was an affectionate portrait of both a friend and the instrument itself. Nevertheless, the deeper, more searching elements of the writing ensured McCabe's characteristic balance, where instinctively felt ideas are worked through with precision.

Over the span of a single multi-sectioned movement, the romantic, heroic facet contrasted strongly with the other influence in this concerto, the horn sound of 1950s and 60s west coast jazz, but it was the clarity of Pyatt's engagement with different instruments in the orchestra, notably marimba and woodwinds, that was most persuasive.

If the BBC National Orchestra of Wales's conductor laureate, Tadaaki Otaka, was crucial in that performance, it was his inspirational vision of Mahler's Fifth Symphony that made this concert unforgettable. Nowhere was Otaka's relationship with the BBCNOW players better exemplified than at the very beginning, when both conductor and prinicipal trumpet Philippe Schartz imbued the sometimes stark drama of the trumpet line with a tenderness that set the tone for the rest of the symphony. The heady mix of despair, passion and abandon was totally involving and the serenity of the central Adagietto quietly sublime.