“The Last Night has never been just about the music; in fact, it’s mostly about everything but the pieces the BBC Symphony Orchestra gamely tries to play through a chorus of klaxons, whistles, and toe-curling audience participation. The first half of the Last Night is traditionally a conventional concert in miniature, a minor inconvenience tolerated by the audience in the hall before the bombastic beanfeast of the second half. It’s the rituals of that second half that have defined a sense of British – or rather, English – patriotism that often curdles into jingoism, with tub-thumping renditions of Jerusalem, Land of Hope and Glory, and Rule, Britannia.”