Prom 53, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Martyn Brabbins, was always going to be a bittersweet affair. It serves as a kind of memorial concert, celebrating some of the favourite pieces of Sir Andrew Davis (1944–2024), the celebrated British conductor — famed for his excitable leadership of twelve (!) Last Nights of the Proms. On the bill? Old and new; with crowd-pleasers and tear-jerkers taboot!

The evening kicks off with Stravinsky’s dark and twisted Symphony in Three Movements (1946), which pops energetically, providing a show piece for satanic strings. After a prolonged set of chair moving (in truth, an interval’s length of time), the centrepiece of a Steve Reich UK premiere begins: Jacob’s Ladder (2023), inspired by the Biblical account of Jacob’s dream, where he sees angels ascending and descending a ladder between heaven and earth. The result, however, is far from heavenly. As somebody commented near to me, “It would have been somewhat new in 1955; in 2024, not so much.” The whole thing feels a little dreary, when it promised more dynamism.

The second half opens with, for my money, the real spectacle of the evening. Tippett’s filmic “Ritual Dances” from his opera The Midsummer Marriage (1955) was a piece close to Sir Andrew’s heart, as indeed was the composer more generally. Brabbins’ baton leads the orchestra finely through the work, which is delightfully surprising in its variation, and, at the same time, deeply moving within the evening’s context. Elgar’s Enigma Variations (1899) rounds off the evening in style… if by ‘style’ you mean “speed above all else”. It’s a crowd-pleaser, and the crowd seems pleased; but it’s Tippett who wins the day.

It would be remiss not to mention that the evening was markedly marred by a family in the row in front, who were either talking, on their phone, or sleeping loudly, switching occupations as the evening went. The Royal Albert Hall boasts an army of smartly dressed and efficient ushers — a pity, on such a moving occasion, they weren’t put to good use.

Tickets for all 73 Proms are available from just £8 on the BBC Proms 2024 website.