A few bars of Delius is enough to stir nostalgia for a pastoral England that may never have existed yet seems to inhabit the high, sustained strings and plangent woodwind which is this composer's aural landscape. For Delius, living in France at the end of his life, blind and paralysed, such an idyll was certainly but bitter-sweet memory when he completed A Song of Summer in 1931.

This short orchestral tone poem opened last night's all-British Prom by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under its Conductor Laureate, Sir Andrew Davis. Tippett's Triple Concerto, which followed, had well matched soloists in Daniel Hope (violin), Philip Dukes (viola) and Christian Poltera (cello), and was sensitively supported by the orchestra. Yet not even Davis's advocacy could bring convincing unity to this episodic work, which has glorious ecstatic moments - plus some rudely unchecked audience coughing.

The evening's finest achievement was Vaughan Williams's wartime Fifth Symphony. This poetic and melancholy work, full of exposed solo writing, showed off the considerable talents of the BBCSO. Each section - solo violin, cor anglais, horns, cellos and basses especially - shaped the score with heartfelt intensity, notably in the visionary third movement. As the work drew to a hushed close the Prommers, too often eager to wreck such moments with loud clapping, stayed silent until Davis, an old hand at Albert Hall crowd control, gave the signal to applaud.