A weekend embracing a Welsh rugby victory and St David’s Day is a heady combination and, with Wales’s own Bryn Terfel gracing this celebration of the nation’s patron saint and its ancient musical heritage, the mood was buoyant.

When abroad, Terfel is the most loyal of ambassadors: this occasion was a chance to honour the song repertoire that was his earliest cultural landscape. The Welsh word cerdd means both a poem and music and, for Terfel, the impliclit connection is fundamental to his concern for the projection of words and meaning. So, in the stormy mood of RS Hughes’s Y Dymestl, the young Terfel had already understood something he would later bring to his interpretation of The Flying Dutchman; in WS Gwynn Williams’s Tosturi Duw, the dulcet tone he brought to the word melyster (sweetness) was long-practised. A sense of loyalty was manifest in Robat Arwyn’s Benedictus and Anfonaf Angel, sung in duet with soprano Menna Cazel, while the folk song Bugeilio’r Gwenith Gwyn, with harpist Hannah Stone, was touching for its warm, unforced sound.

The voices of the National Youth Choir of Wales shone in Mansel Thomas’s setting of Robert Herrick’s To Daffodils, the golden adornment of the day, and the youngsters also added a lovely freshness to the BBC National Chorus of Wales.

Conductor Gareth Jones presided over the BBCNOW forces with calm authority. Music by Hoddinott, Mathias and Karl Jenkins offered some balance but, overall, the programme had too many medleys, bitty by their very nature and full of schmaltzy alien harmonies. The traditional songs have their own natural integrity and surely don’t need Hollywood gilding.

• Available on iPlayer until 31 March.