There is no shortage of enigmas surrounding Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique Symphony. Was it intended as a requiem for the composer himself? Does it express a fear of or longing for death? Could Tchaikovsky have had any inkling that he was to die within a few days of its first performance?

But one thing, surely, is not in doubt: that it deals in neurosis and morbidity. And that is the one thing that Tadaaki Otaka’s account with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales never suggested. The dark melancholy and doomed passion of the first and last movement completely passed him by.

Such passion as there was veered towards the sentimental and prettified; there was little sense of living dangerously, on the edge of reason. The BBCNOW’s playing was well drilled to a fault: a bit more wild abandon would have been welcome.

Welsh composer Grace Williams was represented by her first major published work: the Sea Sketches. Especially effective were the cross-currents set up in the divided strings of Breakers and the closing Calm Sea in Summer. There was more marine imagery in Elgar’s Sea Pictures, with Christine Rice’s light, flexible mezzo sensitively supported by Otaka.

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