The show must go on with a new era for Proms

I HEARD my first classical music as a working class post-prog rock punk on a council estate in the 1970s. Since then I’ve been hooked. The sentiment that classical music is “not for the likes of me” has been a snobbery that society, alas, encourages.

Ironically it may be Covid, which has stopped musicians of all kinds playing together, that persuades more people to give classical music a go. A study by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra suggests that 51 per cent of adults (up from 22 per cent in spring 2018) have enjoyed listening to orchestral music in isolation. This number is 55 per cent amongst 18- to 25-year-olds and 60 per cent amongst 25- to 34-year-olds. Streaming services have allowed them to access the great richness of classical music. The Government has announced a rescue package for the arts, and whilst

The Proms has always been seen as the official start of the summer, of hope, unity and democratic listening

we wait to see the impact, I believe broadcasters still have an important job to ensure that classical music and the arts can be made and enjoyed by as many as possible, from new listeners to aficionados.

From our end, as part of BBC Arts Culture in Qurantine, we have broadcast the first live classical concerts from Wigmore Hall, played without audience save the Radio 3 microphones and Wigmore’s website. Live music has a special kind of intimacy, which radio can transmit so well — to each individual listener who feels they are in communion with a worldwide audience.

Which brings me to the BBC Proms. It’ll be different this year. It will be the Proms not as we know them but as we need them. The festival itself has always been seen as the official start of summer, and of hope, unity and democratic listening. Even in these difficult times, when festivals were unable to run up and down the country for financial or logistical reasons, we knew we had to do everything in our power to ensure the season went ahead in some form.

There will also be a return to working for many musicians who will not have played together or with more than one other person for months in our two live weeks of Proms without audience. We’ll listen and watch as the Royal Albert Hall becomes reanimated with sound produced by talented people hungry to play. We’ll be doing it for the artists desperate to play and for audiences starved of live cultural events. Showing why the Proms has always been the greatest classical music festival in the world and how London is a world capital of culture. And the atmosphere, shared by millions of listeners worldwide, will be electric.