Combining Schoenberg, Berg and Webern in one programme would strike most as an eyewatering challenge. Music from the first Viennese school is usually required to sweeten the bitter pill of the second but, despite the absence of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, this concert given by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales got a good and a warmly enthusiastic audience. Perhaps there's a correlation between 12-tone music and straightened economic times.

Webern's Passacaglia, Op 1 (1908) was the opening work, with the sounds of muted trumpet and flute, then clarinet with veiled strings creating an evocative atmosphere, sustained even as waves of acute tension built up over the course of the piece. The metronomic style of Thierry Fischer's conducting does not always help matters, but his determined thrust ensured a momentum that engaged the ear in the organic process of development, if not the intricacies of actual thematic transformation. His handling of Webern's Variations for Orchestra, Op 30 – its crucial silences in particular – was less convincing.

Llˆyr Williams was the soloist in Schoenberg's Piano Concerto, bringing his customary clarity and insight to the playing, balancing precision with expressive tone, as well as underlining the quirky playfulness of the final Giocoso. Soprano Elizabeth Atherton was the impressive soloist in Berg's two orchestral song cycles, the Five Altenberg Lieder, Op 4 and Der Wein. She was deeply sensitive to the aphoristic yet poetic impulses of the Altenberg settings, Berg's first score written independently of his master Schoenberg, and her voice carried a real radiance in Der Wein der Liebenden. The BBCNOW was in lyrical form throughout, nowhere more so than in Schoenberg's Five Orchestral Pieces, Op 16, the last work in this compelling portrait of an epoch-making trio.