Three pieces of music requiring a large orchestra at the same concert means that minds are fixed from the start on understanding exactly why size and tonal variety are important.

Each of the works performed at this afternoon outing for the BBCNOW and broadcast simultaneously on BBC Radio 3 had its provenance in more substantial masterpieces.

A suite of eight sections from Prokofiev's ballet Cinderella, two segments from the first act of Janacek's opera The Cunning Little Vixen and the famous suite compiled from Kodály's opera Háry János all give a flavour of the originals.

The last has the added interest of exoticism in requiring both a bleating alto saxophone (played by Tim Payne) and a cimbalom (Ed Cervenka, given pole position beside conductor Jac van Steen).

Maestro van Steen, the BBCNOW's principal guest conductor, has patently struck up a good relationship with the orchestra and the heavily-populated band is his element, not surprising for a man who packs a few pounds himself.

Putting its weight behind episodes written with surging orchestration in mind, such as the waltz episodes in Cinderella, the exultant liberation of the Vixen in the Janacek work (she's not cunning for nothing) and the mock-heroic stories of Háry Janos the dreamer, the orchestra demonstrated its part in the relationship.

Kodály’s humour is not restricted to the orchestra just at points where it inflates Háry’s already-exaggerated tales. It’s also present among individual musicians, who were featured in other moods throughout the programme and testified to van Steen’s comprehensive grasp of what was happening, on scales both large and small.