A festival of brass instruments, with some of their finest exponents as well as a whole gamut of music focusing on brass, created a buzz in Cardiff over the weekend. Bookending Arcomis's Brass Event were two performances by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, with virtuoso concertos showcasing the range and brilliance of today's players.

Håkan Hardenberger is a colossus of the trumpet and he graced Tobias Broström's concerto Lucernaris with his fabulously velvet tone, playing the flugelhorn in the long opening statement and maximising the impact of the more intricate writing. But Broström's deliberate theatricality and the lengths he goes to can feel self-indulgent: the colour-coded lighting and the movement from darkness to light work less well than the spatial effect and the interplay of the soloist with live electronics.

Hardenberger carried it effortlessly, but his own arrangement of HK Gruber's 3 MOB Stücke had finesse and wit, saying as much with less. The conducting of last-minute replacement Alexandre Bloch demonstrated a remarkable talent, both in his support of Hardenberger and also in his carefully articulated interpretations of Hindemith's Op 50 Konzertmusik – the BBCNOW's brass players coming into their own here – and Malcolm Arnold's Fifth Symphony. Arnold was himself a trumpeter, so there were more treats here for the section.

Yet the standout work had come in the first concert under Martyn Brabbins with Oliver Knussen's Horn Concerto, a masterpiece of lucidity and relative brevity. David Pyatt played it with great fluency and a glowing tone. Trombonist Peter Moore brought a comparable assurance to Mark-Anthony Turnage's concerto Yet Another Set To, while the dazzling technique of trumpeter Tine Thing Helseth was showcased in Arutiunian's Concerto in A flat. Vivid performances all, but Knussen's music left the indelible imprint.

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