By |

Social media, for all its faults, is also a force for good and can throw up unexpected encounters and delights. One such gem is Andy Lewis’s Proms blog, which I discovered via the music critic of The Spectator, Richard Bratby.

Andy Lewis is blogging about every single Prom of this year’s season, mostly via the broadcasts on BBC Radio 3. He hasn’t missed a single one and is now in the home straight, as it were – the final week, and the close of this year’s at the Last Night of the Proms.

What is so wonderful about Andy’s blog is that it’s not trying to be a serious critique or dry academic appraisal of each concert, but rather a personal reaction to and reflection on the music. He publishes his posts soon after each concert has taken place and as a consequence, his writing is fresh and spontaneous, entertaining, engaging and intelligent (and it reminds me of how and why I started blogging, back in 2010).

I caught up with Andy to find about more about his motivation for writing about the Proms and what he’s enjoyed in this season’s programme….

What made you decide to blog about every single Prom of the 2025 season?

It came about for a few different reasons. I was taken with the premise of the Proms; the fact that it is still possible to buy a ticket on the day for just a few pounds. I used to think to myself, ‘I’d be at the box office every morning if I lived around here.’ This triggered an ambition of one day attending every Prom at the Albert Hall, and this idea has laid dormant in my mind for years. I like to keep myself occupied, and this year my diary was nearly empty for the eight or so weeks when the Proms were happening. To fill my free time, I decided I would ‘attend’ every Prom, whether it be watching it on TV, listening on the radio, or actually getting down to the Royal Albert Hall in person. To make it more meaningful, I decided to create a record of it – hence the idea of the blog. As the weeks have progressed, the blog has also evolved into including little diary snippets from my daily life. If I’m still alive and well in thirty years, it will hopefully be interesting (for me) to read it back. Maybe my opinions on things will have changed by that time. Maybe I’ll be living a completely different life.

Have you attended/followed the Proms before this year?

I had only ever attended one Prom before, and I can tell you exactly which one it was!

It was Prom 48, Sunday 21st August 2016. The programme was Reflections on Narcissus by Matthias Pintscher to start, and then the second half was Mendelssohn’s theme to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. As I remember it, the music was blended with pop-up dramatic performances in different areas of the hall. Going to this Prom was what initiated my desire to see all the acts in one given year, but I had not gotten round to it until now.

What have been the challenges and pleasures of this project? 

The pleasure has been discovering new composers, and getting a deeper understanding of composers I only half-knew before. Additionally, looking up the history and origins of the Promenade concerts themselves has been fascinating. In terms of challenges, it has often been exhausting to keep up with the schedule on a daily basis. Early in the run, I was having doubts as to whether I would be able to keep up with it all. If I miss a Prom one day, the momentum will very quickly snowball against me, so I need to make sure I am on top of blogging every day; trying to keep my writing fresh, avoiding repetition where possible, and keeping my grammar in reasonable check against a tight schedule.

And what have been the stand-out moments/performances for you?

It has honestly all been great and varied, but if you really tortured me I think I would say that the best Proms, for me, have been the ones that took me by surprise – those Proms that I thought were going to be boring and difficult to document, but turned out to be the exact opposite. Who would have thought that ‘100 Years of the Shipping Forecast’ would turn out to be so contemporary and engaging? There were packets of surprises hidden in the ‘Bruce Liu plays Tchaikovsky’ Prom – I was gleeful at the inclusion of Maple Leaf Rag amongst others. And Joe Hisaishi’s Proms debut introduced me to music I already knew. Music in the Studio Ghibli productions such as My Neighbour Totoro offer something gorgeously meditative.

Why do you think the Proms is “the world’s greatest classical music festival”?

I think it’s a combination of accessibility, variety, diversity, and longevity. The fundamental idea of the festival is that it opens up classical music to your ‘average Joe’ like me. I can grab a ticket for £8 (in 2025) and enjoy an evening of world-class entertainment. The variety of the performances across the summer weeks makes sure there is something for everyone. The diversity on the stage has ensured the Proms have kept up-to-date with the world around us, and this in turn has kept the Proms running for as long, and successfully, as they have been.

What would you say to people who are unsure about classical music or who have never attended a Prom before?

I would say, ‘don’t be afraid of getting classical music wrong’. If you enjoy what you hear, go and see it played live, just like you would a pop or rock act. Even pass comment on it if you dare to do so. There may well be a bunch of Oxbridge academics looking back at you like that Leonardo DiCaprio meme, but the truth is that music is subjective and – when offering an opinion on it – they are as clueless as the rest of us.

Would you do it all again in the same way for next year’s Proms? 

Right at this moment I would say absolutely not! However, I do think I have opened a new relationship with the Proms, and in future years I will be more liable to be looking through the catalogue, choosing which Proms I would like to watch, listen to, or attend.

With regard to my writing, this is likely to be a one-off. But I would never say never. It would be nice to do something with a similar twist. For example, another one of my cultural challenges has been to watch every Shakespeare play, performed live. At time of writing I am on thirty-one plays, seen at different venues around the country. Given the number of operas based on Shakespeare and his characters, it could be an idea to review them with an amusing twist, comparing a production at the Royal Opera House to, say, the time I saw the same play at Gordale Garden Centre.

My name is Andy Lewis, I am thirty six years old. From the Wirral but living and working in Runcorn. I work in Medical Information for a multinational healthcare company, and in my spare time I like to attend rock concerts and theatre. I also play guitar, piano and harmonica. I am a music lover with my main genre being blues-rock, but I do also love classical and orchestral music.

Follow Andy on X

Read Andy’s BBC Proms Marathon 2025 blog

Andy Lewis

By |

Guest post by Adrian Ainsworth

It’s not often I take up my pen in literal anger, writing to purge myself somehow of an irritation that has been eating away at me for a day or two now. I speak – as you have no doubt guessed – of the latest BBC Proms recruitment ad, seeking candidates for roles in ‘Live Events and Communications’.

“Here’s a short video,” the BBC Proms Twitter account chirped, “to give you a taster of what it’s like working at the Proms.”

With a cute ‘technical-glitch’ shimmy, we’re immediately introduced to a freshly-minted young BBC publicist. Against a percussive, rhythmic soundtrack, she says: “One thing about the Proms that people don’t know is that it’s not all just about classical music like Mozart and Beethoven.” Cue frantic burst of definitely-not-classical music. She continues, over montages of Proms passim: “The Proms showcases so many different music genres and styles from House, Ibiza music, to Sci Fi film music, to breakdancing music. So there really is something for everyone, and you don’t necessarily have to have a background in classical music to work at the Proms.”

Then we switch to a colleague, whose ‘stand-out moment’ when working for the Proms was dressing up as an astronaut and jumping about on stage during a performance by the band Public Service Broadcasting.

Perhaps anxious to avoid the tone becoming any more ‘space cadet’, the video returns to our first correspondent, who says that “Working at the BBC Proms helped me to build up so many skills. This allowed me to get another job at the BBC working in publicity for TV programmes instead.”

We finish with the Spaceman warmly recalling the various teams within the overall Proms department feeling like a large, happy community, with further images from concerts in which, thankfully, some classical musicians are included.

It may be a feature of lockdown, and the slightly dislocated mental state it can produce, that the oddest and most unexpected things can really push your buttons. THIS really pushed my buttons. I checked to see if it was 1 April. On a second viewing, I felt like gnawing my own arm off, and by a blinking, disbelieving third, I wanted to cry. I assure you, my flippancy is disguising – perhaps not very well – a deep-seated hatred of this advert and the thinking that went into it.

When the ad first appeared, some people reacted with distaste, sadness or horror – similar responses to mine, in other words. Others played its impact down, more or less saying that it’s only aimed at getting a certain type of dynamic, can-do employee through the door and that the ‘audience’, in this case, is not the audience. And yet – it’s out there for all of us to see, isn’t it, as circulated by the BBC Proms team? They endorse this ‘message’.

And what a message. Taking it from the top, what have we got?

  • Luckily, the whole thing isn’t just classical music ‘like’ Mozart and Beethoven. Boooo-ring!
  • The Proms offer a wide range of musical genres, but I don’t know what any of them are. I thought they had quite broad, well-known names like jazz and soul, but someone handed me a piece of paper with ‘Ibiza music’ and ‘breakdancing music’ on it.
  • For those of you who aren’t really interested in the music aspect at all, there’s the jumping astronaut element.
  • After all, you’ll only be using the skills you learn at the Proms to get another job doing what you really want to do.

Forgive me: it turns out I am still angry.

This ad was put together by people who are, unaccountably, embarrassed by classical music – to the point where they feel the need to sideline it, to apologise for its irksome presence. They couldn’t be bothered to give their poor participants some kind of script or direction to sound at least vaguely interested – let alone well-versed – in music of any shape or form. Why bother, I suppose, if they’re only going to hang around for a minimum length of time before moving on?

The Proms is the world’s ‘largest’ classical music festival. I believe this claim is undisputed. Normally, I’d be the first to say size doesn’t matter, quality over quantity, and so on. But I think the sheer scale of the Proms says something positive. It would be pointless, unseemly and of course, wrong to say we have all the ‘best’ venues, singers, players, and so on: this is the arts, not sport. But the ambition shown simply to mount the Proms year in, year out – notwithstanding the virus wrecking the 2020 season – sends a signal about how much we care about classical music. Under the BBC’s stewardship, some 80 concerts take place each year, which reach well beyond the capital: every minute of Proms music goes out on BBC Radio 3, and a handsome amount makes it to TV on BBC4. Programming is deliberately wide, and at its inventive heights it seasons the classical music line-up (which, let’s get this straight, is the absolute backbone of the repertoire) with forays into other genres which complement the whole. The diversity can be itself diverse: macro – full concerts foregrounding musicians from all corners of the globe – or micro – lining up premieres from living composers alongside the old ‘warhorse’ pieces to ensure new music is heard. And as everyone involved knows, there’s still a lot more the festival can do, and a lot further it can go.

I try to get across in all my writing (and occasional speaking) that classical music is approachable and accessible as long as you treat it as such; as vital, vibrant and valid as any other style of music. As a result, the Proms recruitment ad felt like a kick in the teeth. It could have placed classical music proudly alongside the genres it inspires, supports, complements and interacts with… and accordingly, win over some applicants who would want to work in a classical music environment and stay there.

Instead, everything good the Proms sets out to achieve, this unthinking dumbshow throws into reverse. I hope they accidentally recruit some excellent communicators.

(This article first appeared on the ArtMuseLondon site)

Adrian Ainsworth is, by day, a copywriter specialising in plain language communications about finance and benefits. However, he spends the rest of the time consuming as much music, live or recorded, as possible – then writing about it, often on Specs, his slightly erratic ‘cultural diary’ containing thought pieces, performance and exhibition write-ups, playlists, and even a spot of light photography. He has a particular interest in art song and opera… and a general interest in everything else. He is a regular guest writer for The Cross-Eyed Pianist and a reviewer for its sister site ArtMuseLondon.

Twitter @Adrian_Specs

By |

We all knew the Proms would be different in this, the year of coronavirus (or The Virus, COVID-19, the Rona….). Rather than cancel the entire festival, the BBC came up with a compromise – a truncated festival which involved, in the first weeks, broadcasts of previous Proms, not necessarily a “best of the Proms”, but rather a selection of memorable or particularly striking performances and performers. I enjoyed these broadcasts, revisiting Proms of years past and recalling the excitement and pleasure of attending Prom concerts, which I have done since I was a little girl – that special atmosphere in the Royal Albert Hall which is like no other (for all the right, and wrong, reasons!).

For the last fortnight of this year’s season, the BBC broadcast live Proms from the Royal Albert Hall and a handful of other venues around the country. These included performances by the LSO with Simon Rattle, the Aurora Orchestra playing Beethoven 7 from memory (why?!), Benjamin Grosvenor and Mitsuko Uchida, violinist Nicola Benedetti, and Sheku and Isata Kanneh-Mason. Some performers originally booked to appear were not able to travel to London due to the UK government’s confused, scattergun quarantine rules, so others valiantly stepped in at the last minute. The programmes often reflected our strange times – music of quiet intimacy (Kurtag’s … quasi una fantasia …, performed with incredible delicacy by Mitsuko Uchida, following an equally compelling and introspective first movement of Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight’ sonata), hope (Vaughan Williams’ 5th Symphony, first heard at the Proms in the midst of the Second World War), reflection and memorial (Ravel’s Tombeau de Couperin), confidence (the rollicking joy of the finale of Beethoven’s 7th Symphony gave a much-needed boost to those of us who feel utterly ground down by the long months of lockdown and restrictions on daily life – including concert-going). The Last Night of the Proms, this year the subject of even more pearl-clutching and eye-pulling than usual, ended up as a compromise; bereft of its usual jollity and silliness (at least in the second half), it felt restrained and subdued, as if too much exuberance and celebration, balloons and whistles, flag-waving and a good old massed sing-along were inappropriate in these corona times.

There is no question that in all the live concerts the music was performed with absolute commitment. Watching the musicians (and thanks to lots of clever camera work, it was possible to read the range of emotions experienced by the musicians as they played), one sensed a collective sigh of relief, that they were working again, doing what they do best, united after long months of separation.

But something was missing. A very big something – and that was an audience. The Proms aren’t really the Proms without an audience, some 5000 people filling the Albert Hall’s vast auditorium with an infectious enthusiasm for the amazing shared experience that is live music. Admittedly, the BBC and Proms organisers tried their best this year to inject some “atmosphere” into the concerts by placing members of the brass section or singers in the boxes around the hall, enhanced by sexy lighting effects and clever camera angles. But for me all this did was to highlight the sad fact that there was no audience presence. It looked contrived, artificial – and perhaps the worst thing, in my humble opinion, was that it seemed to reinforce the notion that classical music is a ‘museum piece’, to be admired, revered even, from afar, instead of a living, breathing, vibrant artform.

The Albert Hall is vast; it would not have been impossible to bring in a limited, socially-distanced audience, but the organisers’ timidity regarding this reflects, to me, a general timidity amongst bigger organisations and institutions towards the resumption of live performance. It is possible to present live concerts within the current government restrictions – and the Proms could have led the way in this, signalling that live music, with an audience, is far from dead.

Let us hope that the 2021 Proms festival is able to go ahead in its “normal” format, with a full Albert Hall, a roster of fine musicians and a varied programme of great music.

All the performances are available to listen to/watch via the BBC Proms website

(Header image: BBC)

By |

The marketing department at Phase Eight, a women’s fashion label which does a nice line in evening wear, clearly hadn’t done their research when they tweeted this:

Image-1

If you turn up at the Proms dressed like that, especially if you have a ticket to promenade (stand) in the arena, heads would turn, eyes would roll…. because the Proms is surely the most relaxed and casually attired of any classical music event. By all means don a scarlet evening dress to attend the opera at Glyndebourne or Grange Park, but maybe not for the Proms.

Perhaps someone in Phase Eight’s marketing department read that silly article in The Guardian last week which claims that classical music is for the elite, monied class, the “yachts and have yachts” and decided that classical music afficionados leave their yachts and Porsches and head for The Proms, dressed in full evening dress. Or perhaps they’ve confused The Proms with the school prom, that dreadful American import which has infiltrated our UK schools, where teenagers celebrate the end of term by dressing up to the nines and arriving at a local hotel in a stretch limo.

There’s also another tired old misconception at work here, that one must “dress up” to attend a classical music concert. The Proms in particular is very much a “come as you are” festival, and of course if you want to wear a full-length evening gown to a concert at the hot, airless, crowded Royal Albert Hall, by all means feel free to do so, but you’ll probably feel more comfortable in shorts and a tee-shirt!

Sadly, the kind of attire Phase Eight is promoting does rather perpetuate the tedious stereotype that classical music is somehow far grander than other artforms and that one must dress and behave in accordance with strict codes of conduct. This doesn’t really help those of us within the profession who are keen to promote classical music as something for everyone, and where everyone is welcome.