Two concerts built around Karol Szymanowski's instrumental music and songs, juxtaposing them with works by his contemporaries Bartók and Janácek, promised much. The lineup of soloists was impressive: the programmes had been planned by the pianist Piotr Anderszewski, who, as well as playing solo piano works, accompanied the violinist Henning Kraggerud and the soprano Iwona Sobotka, while the Belcea Quartet gave typically accomplished performances of Szymanowski's two string quartets and Bartók's First Quartet.

It ought to have been a feast of sensually textured and richly coloured music, especially as most of the pieces were from the second decade of the 20th century, when Szymanowski's style was at its most opulent and adventurous. Yet however much one likes the idea of these works, with their debts to Debussy, Ravel and Stravinsky, one feels underwhelmed, as if Szymanowski lacked the courage of his convictions, and never comfortably inhabited the musical world he had fashioned for himself.

So the direct comparisons in these concerts became invidious. Janác˘ek's In the Mists, given a vivid, highly wrought performance by Anderszewski, proved far more compelling than his equally fine account of Szymanowski's Metopes. Kraggerud's fabulous playing in Janácek's Sonata made Szymanowski's set of Myths for violin and piano seem decorative and lightweight, while Sobotka was impressive in the song cycle Slopiewnie, but much less so in the better-known Songs of a Fairy Princess, where she could not disguise the sameness of the settings. Szymanowski's musical personality refused to come into focus here, though had the programme included something placing these works in the context of his whole output, some in the audience at least might have gone away more enlightened.

Broadcast on Radio 3 on 6 and 12 July.