Exclusive: BBC reassures Proms musicians
NewsAn end-of-Proms message has been sent to musicians employed by the BBC, assuring them of their value to the organisation.
It is signed by Simon Webb, head of orchestras (pic), who earlier this year tried to demolish the BBC Singers and the BBC Concert Orchestra, and by the emollient Sam Jackson, post-furore controller of Radio 3.
They say:
We’re mindful that 2023 has been a challenging year for our BBC musicians. We are very grateful to you for everything you do and trust you feel encouraged by the reaction of the audience at this year’s Proms where we saw so clearly how much the BBC’s classical music offering is valued.
We hope this update is helpful.
Mindful, eh? No word of regret from those who made it such a ‘challenging’ year.
Reassurance of the audience encouragement. No reassurance of future employment!
Apparently, the BBC once stood for reliable, impartial news, and classical music, with reverence.
How many decades ago was this?
Bring back the likes of Andrew Davis and Sarah Connolly for the Last Night. They understand the culture!
What a trite comment
As opposed to?
I thought Marin Alsopp was great – she was fantastic at the Bournemouth, and I thought she totally ‘got’ last night – as did all the soloists.
I wondered how she managed to remove any sense of energy, vibrancy or excitement from the Wagner and Verdi arias – despite which Lise Davidsen somehow managed to deliver stunning performances of both.
A sign of BBC priorities that they spent 10 minutes on BBC2 talking up the new work by Laura Karpman to open the second half and then failed to broadcast most of it as it was already underway when they cut to BBC1. It’s not even complete on iPlayer.
Sam has been excellent news so far. Long may it continue.
It could be a note by Jack the Ripper to the ladies.
What I got to do
To make you want me?
What I got to do
To be heard?
What do I say when it’s all over, babe?
Sorry seems to be the hardest word (that’s right)
It’s sad, so sad
It’s a sad, sad situation
And it’s getting more
And more absurd
It’s sad, so sad
Why can’t we talk it over?
Oh, it seems to me
That sorry seems to be
The hardest word
What do I do
To make you want me?
What I got to do
To be heard?
What do I say when it’s all over?
Sorry seems to be the hardest word
It’s sad, so sad
It’s a sad, sad situation
And it’s getting more
And more absurd
It’s sad, so sad
Why can’t we talk it over?
Oh, it seems to me (yo, yo)
Sorry seems to be the hardest word
Sorry!
What do I do
To make you love me?
What I got to do
To be heard?
What do I do
When lightning strikes me? Yeah
What have I got to do?
What have I got to do?
When sorry seems to be
The hardest word.
As Elton John used to sing.
Take it from someone with direct experience: Webb would sell his own grandmother if it’d get him out of an embarrassing corner; in fact, if it’d spare him mild inconvenience. His words are entirely without value. Jackson demeans himself by sharing a platform with him.
I believe the BBC Singers had the loudest and longest applause of all from the knowledgeable audience at the end of the evening. Management kindly take note.
Exactly what will that accomplish? You can’t reason with the likes of Webb, Davie and Moore. Their primary goal in running the BBC is shareholder value increase. In these difficult times we have to reckon with the simple fact that arts are a money loser.
Public funding of the arts doesn’t really have a noted impact on a country’s GDP. It’s a money pit that only the wealthiest can afford to support. Namely why all artistic institutions now operate under charitable status. They’re meant to be a soft power for cultural disemination at a time when the world governments prefer to invest their GDP into hard power shows of force. The arts have very little of a role to play in the public sector now, and we have to contend with the fact that the classical music business model no longer makes any money because they a) don’t have any meaningful music to tour, and b) are fighting to keep a centuries old institution alive at a time when audiences don’t like the music anymore. Orchestras need to privatise, bring their repertoire up to date and produce merchandise (recordings) that are unique to them and them only (ie should only be recording commissioned music), because now that you’re faced with competition from better funded and better disseminated orchestras overseas, your recording of Beethoven’s 5th doesn’t stand out anymore.
Think of it another way: why do I want my tax dollars and license fees paying for yet another group to play the same music as the LSO?
“are fighting to keep a centuries old institution alive at a time when audiences don’t like the music anymore”
I’ve been reading this kind of philistinism since I have memory.
I went to quite a few PROMS concerts this year and they were all very well attended, even a Kurtag opera was 3/4 full. Show me any other 3 months spectacle of any kind with that kind of attendance and only baseball comes remotely close to mind, in London this happens on top of 2 or 3 operas some nights, other full orchestra concerts in at least 2 or 3 more venues every night, Wigmore Hall having chamber music as well, plus other concerts coinciding in several other venues.
In other countries, people are eager to watch opera and symphonic concerts via streaming, Wigmore Hall has kept Monday streamings after the worse of the ongoing pandemic and we have a solid number of soloists, orchestras and chamber ensembles capable of filling any venue where they play.
I personally have experienced concerts in the last couple of years in Vienna, Valencia, Mexico City and others and the appetite for classical music is always there.
I sometimes wonder what prophets of doom like yourself are really trying to achieve.
The statement highlighted has no relation to the reality of attendances to concerts, and you getting that so wrong doesn’t invite to read the rest of your diatribe which I have ignored.
Is that my Accountant putting his ‘penny’s worth’
in ?
I add to his insights…there are too many violinists about, take the 1950 ( U TUBE) of any Om Kolsoum recital and count the Violinists…I make it 41 for
1 singer.
The ‘sainted ‘ S.Tzabar
“White Flag Principle” A.Lane
suggested that in any future
War…tragedy would be averted if only Violinists of the opposing Sides were called-up !
Discuss.
P.S schlepping a Piano to the front line is logistically ………un peut trop,n’est pas ?
Errr…what “shareholder value”? The BBC doesn’t have any shareholders.
I assume from your reference to “tax dollars” that you don’t have much first hand experience of classical music in the UK. Or, actually, much classical music at all.
I got that impression too last night — though being in the colonies I was restricted to audio. But the applause for the singers struck me as having a particularly supportive intensity. On the other hand, they were in crackerjack form and any ignoid would have cheered them…I thought it was an exceptionally fine Last Night. I really felt as if I was there.
I was there, yes, we the audience really made an effort to show support for the BBC Singers.
1. The message should be for management, not the musicians.
2. They should be mindful that 2023 has been challenging because of *actions* management has taken – not random events outside their control and agency.
3. The public has shown support but that was never in question. It is management that needs to show support. That’s what’s needed (and has been missing) to reassure musicians.
4. Of course the audience values the BBC’s classical music offering. That’s the whole point! That the authors of this statement should value it as much as the audience.
I degress, I know but this year’s prom season has to have been the worst I have ever had the misfortune to sit through. Bollywood, Northern Soul and Jazz what was all that about and the connection with classical music is…. Marin Alsop was I thought on top form her end of season address was nothing short of a statement on the virtues of Equality and Diversity and its instance on difference at the expense of substance. Britten, Tippett and Maxwell Davies were all openly gay but what they were first and foremost were three very talented British composer’s there sexuality was irrelevant.
Britten didn’t say much about his homosexuality because, well, it was illegal to be an homosexual most of his adult life and the punishment for being one could be truly medieval as we know for the infamous situation of Alan Turing. To say that it didn’t matter when he could have been criminalised is frankly preposterous, of course it mattered, it mattered so much that he couldn’t say it openly.
About the moon classical music in the PROMS:
“(Robert) Newman arranged to meet Wood at Queen’s Hall one spring morning in 1894 to talk about the project. ‘I am going to run nightly concerts to train the public in easy stages,’ he explained. ‘Popular at first, gradually raising the standard until I have created a public for classical and modern music.'”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1sgMxZvFzHQG3Y1HktMfg6w/history-of-the-proms
I’ll repeat the important part: “Popular at first”.
The very first step to get people to listen to classical music is to get them to the stultified auditoriums and concert halls where many people don’t feel they belong to, and this doesn’t apply only to ethnic minorities, to whom the concerts you seem to dislike would have been targeted, but also to people that can’t picture themselves in the auditorium from long established English stock.
I had a quick chat with a lovely couple that lives in the leafy Surrey suburbs, they were attending their first Last Night of the PROMS after they were dragged by their grandchildren to a Dr Who PROM and became enamoured by the experience.
Why shouldn’t the BBC try to reach audiences by any legitimate means possible, and what could be more legitimate than concerts from good quality and significant popular music?
Somebody on this thread was sharing the nonsensical idea that classical music has no public, well, snobbery could actually be the thing that fulfills such prophecy.
So what if 3 concerts of almost 80 aren’t classical music? Many people that normally wouldn’t go to the RAH have gone and hopefully many will have been left with the appetite to come back for similar experiences.
I agree with every word of that! Being lectured to from the pulpit by Marin Alsop on diversity etc was not what the public wanted to hear on the last night of the proms. Stick to classical music and Please find a conductor who gets the British sense of humour.
Syntax?
I refuse to even switch on the Proms now after all that’s happened thanks to BBC hapless & thoughtless management.
Why backtrack now based on last nights circus?
It’s always been a summer festival of note – except this season saw auntie beeb playing every woke card possible to tick as many boxes with as many artists of woke possible, often neglecting and ignoring their own to live on this tiny island…
I loath the party self congratulatory pat on the back Last Night – always have, and not alone on this.
This belated re-assurance based on the piss up in the management box last night means nothing if there are still serious plans to merge 2 BBC House Orchestras & put the BBC Singers out to tender and sponsorship.
Watch this space…
“except this season saw auntie beeb playing every woke card possible to tick as many boxes with as many artists of woke possible, often neglecting and ignoring their own to live on this tiny island…”
So which artist hurt your sensitivities?
Chineke! Orchestra? Sheku or Isata Kanneh-Mason? Yuja Wang? Felix Klieser? Are you even aware that most of Chineke! and the Kanneh-Masons are British?
Tell us which boxes you would prefer unticked, don’t leave us in this limbo.
I wouldn’t trust this apparatchik further than I could throw him. The pressure to preserve the BBC Singers and orchestras must be continued, as the minute they are not front and centre of the news, they will find yesterday’s publicity counts for nothing.
Sadly, in the long term such comments are meaningless. When the dust has settled I’m afraid we’ll probably be back to square one; fine sentiments alone rarely lead to altering decisions that have already been made.
Well said. Never any apologising for misery caused by these people and this government.
Is Simon Webb still in post. After the climbdown I should have thought he would have received his marching orders by now
Last night of the proms balloons going of most of the time, all should been band for life and if possible fined Heavily judging by the ticket prices the Toffs can afford it, it’s not designed for the working Class the ones who would have probably respected the experience and pleased to have been given the chance to access,
JK
Beautiful “Tom Bowling” cello solo from LSO cellist Rebecca Gulliver …. Are the principle cello and viola posts now “ redundant”?
“ principal “
Vacant and recruitment in progress.
I tuned in on BBC 3 Saturday for the entire last night of the Proms and was praying that Marin Alsop would not ruin the evening with her lecturing the world about inclusivity, BLAH BLAH BLAH. But nope, she could not help herself. When will arts organizers learn that audiences don’t want to hear this garbage. Why? Because we tune in for something called music. Please, Marin and BBC, your audience is sick and tired of having this forced down our throats at every turn.