David Pickard’s nine years in charge of the BBC Proms, one of the most enviable jobs classical music has to offer, have certainly not always gone as smoothly as he might have hoped. If the consequences of Brexit and the difficulties it has created for musicians wanting to perform and tour in Britain were not enough to work around, then the havoc that Covid restrictions inflicted on the 2020 and 2021 seasons made nonsense of many carefully laid plans.
Pickard’s programming has sometimes seemed shaped more by a concern to ensure that every politically correct box was ticked than by determination to come up with a summer season that was as adventurous and attractive as an organisation with BBC’s resources should have no problems in assembling. But first impressions of the new season, his last in charge, suggest that Pickard might finally have got close to achieving a decent balance between all the elements and the different genres that are now expected in a full Proms season.
Yes, there are still a few concerts that are rather routine and just a bit safe; the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s opening night, for instance, which has traditionally featured a large-scale, spectacular choral work, seems distinctly subfusc this time, with a programme conducted by Elim Chan that includes Clara Schumann’s Piano Concerto and Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. More significantly, there is a total absence of the one-off, not-to-be-missed special event (such as last year’s performance of Kurtág’s opera Fin de Partie) that these days in Britain only a festival on the scale of the Proms can contemplate, and which ought to be a regular feature of a festival as extensive and ambitious as this.
As always, the best of the visiting orchestras promise something special. While leading US groups are again conspicuous by their absence (both the Chicago and Cleveland orchestras have omitted the UK from their European tours this year), the Proms list is headed by two of Europe’s finest: the Berlin Philharmonic and the Bavarian Radio Symphony, with the Czech and Rotterdam orchestras not far behind them. Both the Berliners and the Bavarians are bringing Bruckner symphonies, part of the celebration of the bicentenary of the composer’s birth, while the Berlin Philharmonic also marks the Smetana anniversary with his cycle of tone poems Má Vlast.
It’s good to see the 50th anniversary of Schoenberg’s death marked, too, with early works (Verklärte Nacht and Pelleas und Melisande) and one of the more rarely performed later works, the Violin Concerto. But after doing the right thing by György Ligeti for his centenary last year, it’s disappointing that there is nothing this time by Luigi Nono in his 100th birthday year.
The brand new works promise to be a mixed bag, though perhaps that’s how it always should be. Among the 20-odd premieres are commissions from Anna Clyne and Cassandra Miller, and UK firsts from Steve Reich, Hans Abrahamsen, Thomas Adès and Francisco Coll, as well as a sheaf of less familiar names.
The increased spread of the concerts around the UK can only be a good thing, too. Last year’s successful weekend in Gateshead is repeated and matched by similar events in Nottingham and Bristol, though the smaller-scale concerts in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, just one in each country, smack a little of tokenism.
And if in the end no Proms season is going to satisfy everyone, then this one promises to do better than most in recent years, in offering something for almost everyone, while providing enough standard concert fare to keep traditionalists happy.