Prom 16: Now / Otaka, Royal Albert Hall, London By Martin Anderson

There has been a run of fine playing at the Proms in the past week, and now NOW – the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, under the former chief (now Laureate) conductor Tadaaki Otaka – in a concert that seemed designed to show off its virtuosity. Otaka is a diminutive, puppet-like figure – he can't be much over 5ft tall – but he seems to be spring-loaded, bounding on to the platform and leaping into the air at the hint of a forte. But he gets the results – and the fortes were a long time coming.

Ravel's Rapsodie espagnole (1907–8) is, like so much of his orchestral music, an exercise in subtlety, the shapes evasive, the rhythm unemphatic, and the colours delicate – the entire work seems to emerge from and return to the dark browns provided by its three bassoons and contra-bassoon; the uneasy tranquillity makes the sudden surges of power that billow up in the closing "Feria" all the more effective.

Karol Szymanowski featured prominently in the 1998 Proms but has been largely forgotten ever since, so his little-heard First Violin Concerto (1916) was particularly welcome. Like the preceding Ravel, it presents a dream world of orchestral half-lights that uses its large orchestra with chamber-musical finesse. The chromatic idiom allows the soloist, soaring over rich, Persian-carpet textures, to enjoy a good deal of melodic independence. The solo part, indeed, can soar to vertiginous heights, but Kyoto Takezawa was absolutely secure, her intonation so precise that even at the stratospheric top of her register she delivered every note sweet and pure.

After the interval, another concertante piece, in the form of Debussy's louche, lazy Première Rapsodie (1910–11) for clarinet and orchestra, excellently turned out by the Belgian clarinettist Ronald van Spaendonck. By now, the perversity of the programme was becoming evident: when you juxtapose three impressionist works whose principal interest is intricate orchestral refinement, the ear slowly ceases to be amazed – Fabergé eggs impress most when you see one at a time, not a whole cupboardful. Where was the instructive contrast here? What was the logic – a French-polish layer-cake? It might look good on paper. Musically, like a depressing number of this year's Proms, it made no sense.

In such a context, the rough, folky vigour of Lutoslawski's 1954 Concerto for Orchestra – given a thrilling performance – brought a refreshing change of emphasis: its lack of harmonic artifice, its insistent rhythms and honest violence were as wholesome as good peasant food after a week of society dinners.