Huw Watkins is now in his third season as composer-in-association with BBC National Orchestra of Wales. The residency began with a retrospective of his orchestral works and the premiere of his cello concerto at the 2016 Proms. This month, Watkins is involved in three BBCNOW concerts in Cardiff, which include the premiere of the second product of the partnership, Spring.

Despite the apparently evocative title, Watkins insists his new piece is not “a pictorial depiction of the passage of the season”, just that its opening, with delicately interlaced flutes and strings, “clearly suggested that time of year”. Yet without explicit extra-musical associations, it’s easy to appreciate Spring as a shapely tone poem, a relaxed essay in sparkling, fresh textures using a large orchestra with restraint and subtlety, and wearing its (mostly British) influences easily – a hint of the radiant ecstasies of Tippett’s Midsummer Marriage at the climax is the only obvious borrowing. For all its clarity, perhaps it’s a bit too well-mannered – the formal symmetry is rather predictable, and a few diversions along the way might have made it more compelling.

BBCNOW’s principal guest conductor, Xian Zhang, had withdrawn from the concert, and Ryan Wigglesworth had replaced her. His account of the Watkins premiere was typically precise and lucid, and the performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony that followed began equally impressively, with a crisply defined opening movement, but lost focus and intensity as it went on. There was a classy quartet of soloists – Elizabeth Atherton, Clara Mouriz, Allan Clayton and Matthew Rose – and the BBC National Chorus of Wales was on fine form, but real imagination and fire were lacking.

• On BBC iPlayer until 18 February.