In 1940, in the Katyn forest inside the Soviet Union, 20,000 Polish prisoners of war were shot on the orders of Stalin. Russia then claimed Nazi Germany was to blame.
Polish composer Andrzej Panufnik's Katyn Epitaph, written in 1967, was not simply a tribute to these men but a means of drawing attention to the then unacknowledged atrocity. Exiled in Britain since 1954, Panufnik died in 1991, having lived to see part-admission of guilt following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Tadaaki Otaka's account of the piece with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales was lucid. Its strength is that it speaks its message with such economy, beginning with a solo violin whose thin, melodic thread is like the memory of a faint voice carried on the breeze. That thread is first taken up by the wind section with the solemnity of ritual yet bittersweet harmonies, and in their turn by all the strings.
A single murmur grows into an unassailable body of sound, but - lest the mind be seduced by the music's strange beauty - from the timpani come the deathly thuds of gunshots. Then silence. At a time when the 9/11 anniversary and the calls for war are ever-present, here was a sobering reminder of the atrocities perpetrated by man on his fellow man.
Bruch's late Concerto for Clarinet and Viola was written in 1911 and belongs to a quite different world. The two instruments embark on a politely lyrical discourse rather than deeply passionate engagement. For all the fine efforts of the respective soloists, Robert Plane and Steven Burnard, this did not emerge as a neglected masterpiece.
The intimacy of Theatr Brycheiniog makes it ideal for most things, but its dry acoustic is hardly suited to the big orchestral repertoire that made up the rest of the programme. The almost sinfonia-concertante-style of the Bruch could pass muster and Elgar's Overture Froissart and Brahms's Third Symphony may do the same by the time they are processed for broadcast, but the lack of resonance meant there was little of the guts that these works demand. Otaka's lovingly shaped phrasing of the Brahms was some compensation, but not enough.
