Like taking to a moving escalator, the 2014 Proms has resumed the atmosphere of last summer – the heat, the crowds, the intensity. This sense of continuation is also built into the opening work, Elgar’s The Kingdom, the second part of a projected trilogy on the early Church, which adopts leitmotifs from Part I, Wagner-fashion, while adding new ones. The high point was Pentecost, when the 200 singers of the BBC Symphony and Welsh Choruses as the People reacted to the apostles’ behaviour in the Upper Room, some suggesting inspiration, others inebriation in contrapuntal arguments over a slurring chromatic bass. The magic did not last. One might say conductor Andrew Davis and the BBC Symphony Orchestra put across too well Elgar’s growing uneasiness with the cloying rel