Performer: Anastasia Kalagina

In a quirky programme featuring English, Welsh and Russian music the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales began their new season at St David’s Hall showcasing, with mixed results, their composer-in-association Huw Watkins, Elgar and three Russian composers at different stages in their careers.

Valery Gergiev conducts a mesmerising account of Wagner's Siegfried in Birmingham

Mikhail Kazakov gives a compelling portrayal of the troubled Tsar Boris, as Gergiev and the Mariinsky provide a great showcase for one of the masterworks of Russian music.

The Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff celebrates its 10th anniversary this autumn, and as part of the celebrations the Mariinsky Opera, under its conductor Valery Gergiev, was invited back for a concert performance of Prokofiev’s comic opera, Betrothal in a Monastery.

Mussorgsky’s rich, complex music and Boris Godunov’s tragic story is told with very original vision in Tugan Sokhiev’s concert version. The Salle Pleyel made no mistake about it: this Boris will stay in our memories for a while.

Although both works have the goal of E major in common, the final destinations of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto and Mahler’s Symphony no. 4 couldn’t be more different. Tugan Sokhiev and the Philharmonia fell short of what could have been, but the third movement of the Mahler stood out.