Cometh the war, cometh the man - and, on this occasion, cometh the orchestra.

When you thought Shostakovich had said in his vivid Seventh Symphony (the ‘Leningrad’) all there was to say about the German invasion of the Soviet Union, he offers his Symphony No. 8, the centrepiece of a wartime trilogy and an extended, non-triumphal meditation on pain, suffering and a longing for peace.

As it progresses, once cannot forget that the composer was waging his own pre-Purge battles with the Soviet authorities, who were worried that, as a cultural flag-waver, his standard was tending to droop.

What he was doing was the antithesis of anything so proper and simplistic. War might be about heroism and victory, but it was also about loss, resignation and battered hopes. In the Eighth, Shostakovich dwells on them at length.

As an orchestral undertaking it calls for both manic energy and a febrile delicacy stretched sometimes to extremes, with soloists - cor anglais, flute, piccolo, bassoon, trumpet, cello and violin - handed responsibility for keeping the human spirit’s flame alight when the whole embattled orchestra seems to have spent itself.

It's a monumental testament and this was a monumental performance under the BBCNOW's principal conductor, Thomas Sondergard, returning for the first concert of the new season at the helm of the St David’s Hall resident orchestra.

The audience’s ‘Happy Birthday’ outburst at the start was for the conductor but it could also have marked the thirtieth anniversary of the BBC National Chorus of Wales, whose tightly-packed and muscular utterances in Poulenc’s Gloria matched the band’s. The ethereal soprano soloist was Marita Solberg.