There was a time when John Ireland’s Piano Concerto popped up regularly at the Proms. But when the modernist moguls, led by William Glock, took over at Radio 3, English music was dismissed as unfashionable. John Ireland more or less vanished off the musical map.

More power, then, to York Symphony and its conductor, Alasdair Jamieson, for reviving the concerto in Saturday’s programme, where it was balanced by Brahms’s Third Symphony, each introduced by a Romantic overture. Kathryn Coombes has had the work in her locker all her professional life – she plays the solo role from memory – and she proved an ideal exponent.

Her clarity and sprightliness in the outer movements gave them a luminosity they do not always enjoy.

Best of all, although Ireland flirts dangerously with Gershwin-style harmonies, Coombes never allowed sentimentality to cloy her playing, preferring cleaner, English pastoral flavours. Similarly, while tinting the slow movement with rubato, her momentum never lapsed. Jamieson kept his orchestra in close attendance.

Schumann’s overture to Genoveva was the perfect prelude to Brahms’s Third (which it predates by over 30 years), its orchestration very similar.

The orchestra carried its spirit into the Brahms, whose fast movements benefited from the conviction of the strings and an admirable horn section.

Unbalanced woodwind ensemble made for a woolly Andante and cohesion sometimes faded at quieter moments in the central movements. But the energy of the Ireland prevailed throughout the evening.