The year 1934 was a milestone in British music, marking the births of Peter Maxwell Davies and Harrison Birtwistle, but also the deaths of Elgar, Holst and Delius. A weekend of music commemorating the end of the Elgarian era closed with a work of each of the three played by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales under David Atherton.

Holst’s rarely performed First Choral Symphony is a large-scale setting of poetry by Keats. For the most part it shows Holst at his hermetic, elusive best, not least in the opening Invocation to Pan, where the verse is chanted sotto voce against a freewheeling solo viola.

The arcane mysteries and antique world of the Ode on a Grecian Urn are also skilfully invoked, but fast-moving passages left the BBC Symphony Chorus and BBC National Chorus of Wales, superbly drilled and finely tuned as they were, struggling to project acres of text. Susan Gritton was the fine soprano soloist.

After a hedonistic ramble through the Lincolnshire fields to Delius’s Brigg Fair, Atherton brought individual touches to bear in Elgar’s Enigma Variations. The annunciation of the enigmatic theme seemed to continue the sensual, pastoral mood of the Delius, while Nimrod had a deeply introspective, almost mystical quality perhaps harking back to the Holst. Other variations were richly characterised, culminating in a grandiose, expansive self-portrait of the composer. On BBC Radio 3, 2.15pm on Friday.