The rapport that conductor laureate Tadaaki Otaka has with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales gives their performances a wonderfully honed sheen. Yet, no matter how disciplined and meticulous, they never become predictable. Thus Brahms's Academic Festival Overture and Elgar's Enigma Variations, which respectively opened and closed this concert, combined rich sonorities with symphonic rigour and a respect for the composers' intentions.

But of most interest this evening was pianist Sunwook Kim, winner of the 2006 Leeds International Pianoforte competition, as soloist in Rachmaninov's Variations on a theme of Paganini. At 18, the South Korean Kim was the youngest ever Leeds winner; less than a year later, his playing here was just as convincing, with a seemingly easy technical command of the keyboard.

Kim's most persuasive attribute was his ability to vary the weight of expressive tone with control and imagination, so that each of Rachmaninov's variations was carefully defined: the slow melodies arched elegantly, the moments of menace had a dark drama, while the crystal clarity of the fast fingerwork was matched in the fortissimo passages by a physical power unassumingly delivered.

In the context of an already substantial programme, Vaughan Williams' orchestral arrangement of his chamber song-cycle On Wenlock Edge seemed a slightly odd inclusion, but the insight of Otaka and tenor James Gilchrist raised it to a plane of its own. With Gilchrist colouring every emotional nuance of AE Housman's poetry with great subtlety and Otaka bringing out all the detail of the score, an interpretation of such integrity and passion was justification enough.