Considering that this was part of of a Radio 3 Dylan Thomas day the links with the poet were surprisingly tenuous. There was a work by Dylan's composer friend Daniel Jones, conductor Tecwyn Evans had a parent from 'the ugly,lovely town' of Swansea though he hailed from New Zealand (names can be misleading), and the programme comprised a first half of Welsh music and a second half from America,representing the countries in which he lived and died.

Even the new work by Mervyn Burtch ('4 Portraits of Dylan Thomas') seemed to link with its subject fairly tangentially . The programme note told me that each of its movements explored a different aspect of his eventful life though little of this was obvious on first hearing other than in expressing the poet's high spirits and chaotic life. The music was full of abruptly changing textures and contrasting ideas with expert handling of instrumental colour . Its clearly delineated moods, concise ideas and melodrama were often reminiscent of classic film music.

Before this Robert Plane,the orchestra's principal clarinettist, gave a beautifully shaped performance of Alun Hoddinott's first clarinet concerto,the work that first announced the composer to the world as a major composer in 1954. It is a brief ,highly attractive work with,at its its heart, a shadowy,brooding second movement elegy. The outer movements had the requisite wit and geniality.

I could not help thinking that this celebration of Welsh music (completed by Daniel Jones' Dance Fantasy) should not have been performed to a relatively small audience at the Hoddinott Hall but rather as part of a much higher profile event, say the Welsh Proms . This was contemporary Welsh music at its most accessible.

The second half comprised Stravinsky's 'In memoriam Dylan Thomas' - an extraordinarily terse work based on a series of five notes, and Copland's suite from the ballet 'Appalachian Spring'.