Moving with the times

It is inevitable that a festival the size of the Proms should become a showcase not just for the artists taking part, but also for the way classical music is perceived more generally. There would be no point in a public services’ provider such as the BBC launching such an enterprise every year if it didn’t deliver what people wanted. And indeed it is clear that it matters very much to the BBC how many people do actually attend these concerts: the blurb is as full as ever of figures showing how last year was a ‘record-breaking’ year; and now how this year there were ‘376 tickets sold every minute during the first hour of BBC Proms booking’. Buzz, buzz, buzz.

There has been a trend over recent years towards preferring what is new and shiny — young people, recent repertoire, media personalities. One notices, for example, that the presenters on TV and radio are given as much hype in the publicity as the people who are actually giving the concerts. The soloists in the many concertos on display this year seem by and large to be young people who scrub up well in their photographs. And the amount of new music is staggering: 11 new commissions from ‘living composers’ (as the press pack intriguingly has it); and 26 premières.

The number of hip, user-friendly concerts is growing. We have become used to Blue Peter and other Family Proms where the audience can join in, but this year there is a move towards the funny and even wacky: ‘Classical music meets comedy at the Proms for the first time with an evening hosted by comedian and pianist Tim Minchin’ (13 August); ‘Free Family Prom as Proms collaborates with CBBC’s Horrible Histories for the first time’ (30 July); ‘First Audience Choice Prom’ (2 September) — where the audience can choose what music they listen to, though how the librarians are going to provide enough music for that to work has yet to be seen.