Romantic dreams

British music isn’t what you might think. The deeply romantic music of Alice Mary Smith (born in London in 1839) is at the heart of this concert; an unfairly neglected but beautiful counterpart to Weber’s brooding First Clarinet Concerto, both performed tonight by one of the world’s pre-eminent living clarinettists. Vladimir Jurowski launches the evening with Wagner’s barnstorming overture, and then dives deep into Brahms’s expansive Second Symphony. Written on the sunlit slopes of the Austrian Alps and filled with lullabies, folksongs and half-remembered passions, this is music that seems to glow from within.