Graham Fitkin and his music have been a feature of the Vale of Glamorgan festival for a couple of decades, and his 50th birthday feels like a milestone for the festival and its audience, incredible though it seemed. "What do you mean, 50 – that young man in tight trousers who just took a bow?" someone was heard to ask.

But perhaps the bigger career milestone for Fitkin was in 2011 when his Cello Concerto was premiered by Yo-Yo Ma at the Proms. The work's strengths re-emerged convincingly in a performance by soloist Raphael Wallfisch and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales under Garry Walker. Though Wallfisch could not boast the characteristic Ma depth of tone, his playing was hauntingly expressive, and the Hoddinott Hall acoustic allowed the orchestral colours, with harps and muted trumpets, a clear canvas. The stillness and questioning of the opening poses an immediate challenge to the listener – a single note spun out in a long thread. Yet the concerto is very much about how the individual can validate their own particular voice in the face of the assertions of greater numbers, namely the orchestra, and this felt less to do with the balance of power than about finding a path that could be followed with integrity. As the cello returned to the simplicity of the opening after the bombardment of orchestral chords, Wallfisch could endow the line with a new serenity that spoke eloquently.

Fitkin's Mindset was conceived as a ballet score, written for Jonathan Watkins' As One performed by the Royal Ballet in 2010. As a concert piece, its episodic form moulded effectively into a single extended span of music, it had a natural theatricality, not least when the piccolo insisting on a rising interval, creating real dramatic tension.

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