Ageing punks will have noticed that Cardiff Philharmonic Orchestra’s title for its latest visit to the ‘Stute - London Calling! - is also the name of a seminal album by The Clash.

But the only clash here was between the populous orchestra and its disproportionately small venue.

It made for some shrill sounds as the climaxes and other booming passages, particularly in Vaughan Williams’s A London Symphony, vainly sought space in which to expand and settle less harshly on the ear.

Add the hothouse warmth created by the bodies of musicians and audience combined, and you could almost watch some instruments wandering out of tune.

However, the opportunity to hear a capable symphony orchestra in the Western Valley of Gwent is as rare as a steak cooked beneath a dodgy grill and when you’re famished you will eat the under-done - or, in this case, the over-cooked.

Part of the problem was that the programme of London-linked music would have been heard at its best .the following night at St David’s Hall, Cardiff, the last of October’s three outings for the orchestra, conducted by founder Michael Bell.

It was a virile performance of the symphony, missing little of the composer’s scene-painting and hoisting the giant question-mark that hangs spiritually over much of his work.

Passion a-plenty, too, in Elgar’s Cello Concerto, with the promising Steffan Morris as soloist; pomp and swagger in Walton’s Orb and Sceptre; and classy light music in Eric Coates’s London Suite.

Capital calling, sure enough. If only we hadn’t been addressed as if through a loud-hailer.