I can reveal exclusively the real reason why Roger Wright, the former controller of the Proms, resigned his post last year. Wright’s producer had wanted to programme the original 1873 version of Bruckner’s Third Symphony, but Wright, and I’m quoting him verbatim here, considered this notion to be “political correctness gone mad”, and over a steak dinner in a country hotel in Northumberland, the two men came to blows.
“We must play the 1889 version, you tin-eared tosser!” Wright bawled as unavoidably, and regrettably, his fist collided with his producer’s teeth. A clear line, at last, had been crossed, and Wright was banished to a faraway place by the sea.
This is the stuff of pure fantasy, of course, but disentangling the future of the Proms from the wider context of BBC strife becomes an increasing challenge, and there are telling parallels to be drawn between the Proms and Top Gear. Both institutions are currently rudderless. Since Wright announced his departure over a year ago, the BBC has yet to appoint his permanent replacement; ditto Top Gear, as BBC executives wonder which way to jump with a new replacement – someone more stupid than Clarkson, or a woman.
And connections run ever deeper. With the BBC fighting to maintain high-visibility in a field crowded by commercial, digital and online activity, brands such as Top Gear and the Proms are necessarily squeezed until the pips rattle. Don’t forget, Top Gear was once a modest motoring programme presented by Angela Rippon. Not that there was ever anything modest or self-effacing about the Proms. The BBC always knew the worth of this classical music knees-up held every summer in South Kensington. Time was when Richard Baker’s crushed velvet jackets were as sexy as it got. But today the suspicion is voiced that the spectacle of the Proms as “event” is feeding the music. The Proms is no longer about music; the Proms is about the Proms.
The suspicion is that the spectacle of the Proms as “event” is feeding the music
When, in 2012, Daniel Barenboim addressed the Proms audience after completing his cycle of Beethoven symphonies interwoven with works by Pierre Boulez, his message was unambiguous: no other music festival in the world would have the audacity, or the resources, to mount such an ambitious programme. And witnessing some of the reactions to the announcement last week of this year’s season – the 120th – you could only assume cultural doomsday has descended. Richard Morrison in The Times wrote of an excess of what he patronisingly termed “tinsel”. “Britain has enough pop and rock festivals,” he said. “The Proms should be an unapologetic celebration of classical repertoire.”
But can any music festival that offers up John Eliot Gardiner conducting Monteverdi’s Orfeo and a new orchestral piece by Michael Finnissy, Beethoven’s five piano concertos alongside retrospectives of Nielsen and Sibelius, be that bad? A solitary night of club music with DJ Pete Tong, and Proms led by the BBC Asian Network, BBC Radio 6 and BBC Radio 1Xtra manages to unpick everything the Proms has represented for over a hundred years? Really?
Clearly the festival does sit at a point of transition, residual traces of old-school BBC thinking, personified by Wright, rubbing awkwardly against internal pressures to, as the suits would no doubt have it, increase brand awareness. That’s why we have a Doctor Who Prom and a Sherlock Prom – and why jokes persist on Twitter about a fantasy Masterchef Prom, a Bargain Hunt Prom, a One Man and His Dog Prom; and you just know that someone in Broadcasting House will have floated the prospect of a Strictly Come Dancing Prom.
Pop and rock festivals litter our cultural landscape, but the idea that the Proms should unapologetically celebrate “classical repertoire” is a simplistic and glib solution to a series of bewilderingly complex questions, both musical and social. What is “classical repertoire” exactly? Would eliminating tinsel from the Proms mean no more Strauss waltzes, Gilbert and Sullivan, John Wilson, or performances of Rachmaninov’s Third Symphony?
Or is classical tinsel to be indulged, while serious work by musicians who happen to find their muse outside the classical tradition not? Give me Pete Tong over the inexplicably feted Eric Whitacre any day; and music by electronic explorers A Winged Victory for the Sullen, who feature in the Radio 6 Prom, excites my ears more than the prospect of more domesticated “new” music by Colin Matthews or Mark-Anthony Turnage.
No, the day The Proms turns inwards is the day it ceases to have much meaning. The possibility that something called “The Proms” might one day exist that isn’t anchored around classical music sounds far-fetched as things stand now, but the test will be whether the BBC appoints as Wright’s replacement someone with gravitas who knows their Alkan from their Enescu. The spectre of hearing all five of Prokofiev’s piano concertos and all Bach’s cello suites performed in single evenings fills me with dread. Does this programming do the music any favours? I’d argue not. But, boy, it looks good on paper. These are “events”! Something to capture the headlines, something for “Prom Queen” Katie Derham to preen about in her One Show-styled Proms chatshow.
In 1992, the then Proms controller John Drummond invited the composer Mike Westbrook to perform his reimaginings of Rossini at the Proms – and a meaningful link was made between jazz and classical traditions. This year’s equivalent is a concert labelled the “Story of Swing” – which doesn’t amount to much more than retreads of swing hits by Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey.
And such bolt-ons from outside the classical tradition feel like a problem not because they’re there, but because this music is programmed with a paucity of imagination.
Pairing the Stranglers with the London Sinfonietta in 2013 turned out to be a seriously rubbish idea, but the simple thought of handing over the stage to a serious jazz composer – Anthony Braxton, Carla Bley or William Parker – to perform their music; or letting the Austrian electronic composer Christian Fennesz present his recent work based on sampled fragments of Mahler; or letting the French improvising guitarist Noël Akchoté play his transcriptions of Bach and Gesualdo; or an Autechre Prom or a Godspeed You! Black Emperor Prom is an anomaly; presumably not “eventy” enough.
The Proms has become so monolithic that no one is minded to put feelers out to discover meaningful connections between its existence and the outside world. The corporate ambition, you fear, wants to see John Wilson dressed as a Dalek conducting Land of Hope and Glory – in Gangnam style.
