Llandaff Cathedral was the appropriately intimate setting for this afternoon concert of music by Polish compatriots Witold Lutoslawski and Henryk Gorecki. The pairing of these two composers - divided in age by a decade, and represented here by pieces written eight years apart - was given added resonance by the overhanging sculpture, Majestas, by Jacob Epstein, whose roots were in Poland.

Lutoslawski's Chain II, from 1984, is to all intents and purposes a violin concerto, full of brilliantly glittering writing. But the work's subtitle - dialogue for violin and orchestra - took on a greater significance here, thanks in part to the clarity of the almost baroque-style exchanges between soloist Lesley Hatfield and the players of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. It added the metaphorical sense of a chain of arguments as well as Lutoslawski's specific allusion to his structural device of interlocking phrases. Hatfield, more usually the demure and contained leader of the BBCNOW, gave a wonderfully rhapsodic performance here, with the exquisite elaboration in the slow third section of the concerto creating crystalline textures that seemed to mirror the sunlight streaming in through the cathedral's high clerestory windows.

Gorecki's Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, written in 1976, was probably the principal attraction for the audience, and they were rewarded by a glowing interpretation from soloist Susan Bullock and conductor David Atherton. The soprano line, with its sequence of settings of three Polish texts, covers the richest, warmest, part of Bullock's voice, and it was compassion rather than any overt drama that gave a certain aura to her singing, transcending the anguished pain of the words and elevating it to a ritual of lament.