Themed concert programmes don't take much planning but they are not as frequent as they should be.

How effective a programme with a common thread can be was demonstrated at this concert, broadcast live from the WMC's Hoddinott Hall for Radio 3.

Russian, yes. But also Russian with a sombre hue, as the massed ranks of the BBCNOW gathered under guest conductor Roberto Minczuk's direction for works by Mussorgsky and Rachmaninov.

However, when the Russians do sombre they are usually anything but funereal. As Rachmaninov shows in his Symphonic Dances, written at the end of his life, and Mussorgsky in his Songs and Dances of Death, the fire takes a lot of putting out.

For Mussorgsky in this work it's not time to do so anyway, as the singer rails at death's premature visitation with mixed emotions, not least as the tipsy peasant in Trepak, freezing to death while dreaming of sunshine and haymaking.

The portrayals up-and-coming Dutch baritone Henk Neven brought to the songs were startlingly realistic. For a singer with a warm, lyric gift, this was role-play par excellence, carried along by the added value of Shostakovich's orchestration, which Minczuk allowed to flower with dissolving charm.

The ominous plainchant of the 'Day of Wrath' figures in Rachmaninov's The Isle of the Dead, which opened the concert, and returns in the Dances, which found the whole orchestra in expansive form, the string-playing particularly rich and pregnant, the brass emphatic, the winds choral-like and the percussion pointed and precise.