While Elgar's early concert overture, Froissart, marked his first big commission, from the Three Choirs festival, it is also one of the first indications of his deeply Romantic spirit. Naming the piece for the 14th-century chronicler Jean de Froissart, Elgar celebrates the age of chivalry. The piece has his instinctive feel for the orchestra, and the instruments seem to carry their metaphorical lances high. Tadaaki Otaka, conductor laureate of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, gave it the full treatment here, with a Wagnerian sweep to the writing.

The six poems that Benjamin Britten chose to set in his Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings also reflect medieval England but, in this performance, soloists Andrew Kennedy and the BBCNOW's principal horn, Tim Thorpe, captured the music's more austere, often eerie, atmosphere. Kennedy is already gaining a reputation for his Britten: the articulation is impeccable, and he colours the high phrases without any strain. Together, he and Thorpe brought an almost operatic drama to the brief but pungent Elegy and a lovely fleetness to the hunting images of the Hymn.

Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony was written not long after Elgar's Froissart in the early 1890s, but inhabits a more complex psychological world. In sanctioning the title Pathétique rather than Tragic, as suggested by his brother Modest, the composer acknowledged the passion implicit in the music, and Otaka seemed to recognise the distinction. He exercised restraint in the early movements, keeping a tight rein on the emotional undercurrent. Hence the powerful feeling of Tchaikovsky at last unburdening his soul in the finale, with the natural resonance of Swansea's Brangwyn Hall adding its own particular bloom to the BBCNOW sound.