Forget the carnival of Union Jacks, the Proms are a mouth-watering extravaganza where you can see the biggest names in classical music for the price of a sandwich, writes Aengus Collins
The Proms season begins next week in London. Justly famous, the Proms are also widely misunderstood. Around the world, misconceptions flourish; mention of the Proms conjures images of British regalia at the Last Night, the annual carnival of Union Jacks, pomp and circumstance, hope and glory. But it is a paradox of the Proms that the Last Night, unquestionably the series' signature event, bears little resemblance to the remainder of the season.
For two months the Proms are simply a series of classical concerts - music of the highest order presented at the lowest prices. Throughout these two months, people come, they watch, they listen intently and they leave. There are no flags, no singing, no dressing up, just music being listened to, night after night for over seventy concerts. Only for the final Prom does time somehow slip out of joint and a very different audience slip through the door.
The breadth of the programme and the calibre of the performers at the Proms each year are astounding. Each season is built around a central theme. This year's theme is Greek Myth, and at the seasons's heart will be a bicentennial performance of Berlioz's The Trojans. There will be 30 themed performances, including Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, Strauss's Electra, Britten's Phaedra, Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex and Mendelssohn's Antigone.
But the theme accounts for only a small minority of the works performed, and the rest of this year's programme ranges all the way from Renaissance polyphony to the European première of John Adams's September 11 piece, On the Transmigration of Souls. Anyone with the remotest interest in music will find something to inspire them or intrigue them,
The list of performers, this year as every year, reads like a who's who of the music world. Conductors include John Eliot Gardiner, Roger Norrington, Simon Rattle, Zubin Mehta, Paul McCreesh, Paavo Järvi, Daniel Barenboim and Valery Gergiev.
Orchestras include the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Vienna Philharmonic, Barenboim's West-Eastern Divan (comprising young Arab and Israeli musicians), the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Tonhalle, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Among the soloists appearing will be Leif Ove Andsnes, Yo-Yo Ma, Anne Sofie von Otter, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Tasmin Little and Hélène Grimaud.
It is a mouth-watering prospect.
The Proms were founded in 1895 by two men, impresario Robert Newman and a young conductor, Henry Wood. Though now generally referred to simply as the Proms, the series also retains its more formal title, the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts.
The object of Wood's Proms was to put on a series of concerts, at affordable prices and in an informal atmosphere, with a view to broadening the public audience for what Wood termed "serious music". It is an ethos that remains unchanged over a century later.
At the heart of the Proms are the "promenaders" or "prommers" who give the series its name. These are simply the 1,400 people with unreserved standing tickets at each concert who fill the ground floor arena of the Royal Albert Hall. Promming tickets cost just £4 (€5.80), and even less than that for those who buy a season ticket. What's more, for every concert, irrespective of demand, more than 500 tickets are held back until an hour before the performance starts. Even if all pre-sales tickets have long since sold out, you can still turn up on the day and pay not much more than the price of a sandwich to see, for instance, Simon Rattle conduct the Berliner Philharmoniker. Music does not come much more accessible than this.
The only downside with promming is the minor inconvenience of standing through the concert and of queuing for your ticket.
But it's difficult to begrudge the need to queue when prices are so low. The Proms are one of a number of British summer events - Wimbledon is another - where queuing has become a well-regulated institution with admirably progressive distributive effects, allocating tickets to those with time on their hands rather than money in their pockets.
Pushing the price of tickets down so low is obviously good for the audience, enabling more people to see more music than would otherwise be the case. This in turn is good for music, which can only benefit from even a modest influx of new listeners.
But aside from these broader effects, bringing in such a large number of standing concert-goers and giving them pride of place at the heart of the hall also changes the geography and the atmosphere of the classical concert. Usually, the big-spenders take the seats at the front while the hoi polloi are shuffled off into the gods. At the Proms the situation is pretty much reversed and the orchestra is faced not with ranks of seats but with a much more populous and animated mass of bodies.
It makes, says series director Nicholas Kenyon, for a particularly intense connection between orchestra and audience, a connection which is strengthened further by the venue itself - the Royal Albert Hall is larger than many classical auditoriums, and its round shape means that the orchestra is swept up into an audience which almost surrounds it.
"Every artist we speak to loves coming here, and for one reason. The intensity of the audience's listening is unparalleled." says Kenyon. He was formerly head of BBC Radio 3, and the BBC's role as sponsor of the Proms has been crucial since it first became involved in the 1920s, bankrolling the concerts as part of its public service remit to educate and to entertain. Every concert is broadcast live on BBC Radio 3, and the growth of digital services has led to an increase in the number of concerts being televised. This year, 25 in total will be screened - 11 on terestrial TV, a further 14 on the digital BBC4.
It is the BBC's money which allows the Proms' organisers to slash the ticket prices. Almost half of the season's total costs, which run to about £6.5 million (€9.4 million), are met from the BBC's licence fee, an arrangement which offers Kenyon and his team a remarkable degree of financial stability. It means they don't have to expend their energies on endless rounds of fundraising. They are free to focus on the music, and it shows.
Year after year, audiences at the Royal Albert Hall are provided with music on a scale you could not hope to see in Ireland. And yet it takes place right upon the Irish doorstep.
More of us, perhaps, should forget the atavism of the Last Night, take the plunge and go. The cost of attending the Proms is higher, obviously, for an Irish visitor than for a London local, but the ticket price is almost negligible and travelling from Ireland to London these days is often cheaper than travelling within Ireland. There is no reason why more Irish people shouldn't jump on boat or aircraft and take advantage of this unique, inspiring festival of music.
The Proms run from Friday, July 18th, to September 13th at the Royal Albert Hall, London. For full programme details, see www.bbc.co.uk/proms
The Proms Irish style
The good news about the Irish version - the RTÉ Proms at Farmleigh - is that they're not just reasonably priced, they're free. (The bad news is that if you haven't applied for tickets already, you're too late). Those lucky enough to have tickets for the Proms, during the last week of this month, can look forward to Italian Favourites, Russian Favourites (both NSO), Spooky Delights and Dancing Dervishes (Ulster Orchestra), A Glenn Miller Gala (RTÉ big band), The Rat Pack (NCO), Rattlebag Listeners' Choice Opera Special and Super Troupers-- the Music of Benny and Bjorn (NCO).For details of other Farmleigh events see www.farmleigh.ie
