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CLARE STEVENS' EDITORIAL
from the current issue of MUSIC TEACHER
One of my most vivid childhood memories is of summer evenings at my family's holiday house in a sleepy little seaside village on the Ards Peninsula, Northern Ireland. To call our summer retreat a cottage would be a misnomer - it was a terraced house, and there was nothing picturesque about it other than the view of the sea from the front bedroom. We had no bathroom, no hot water (let alone central heating), a single cold tap in the kitchen, and an outside loo. There was no telephone, and no television.
But there was a radio, and every evening after tea my parents would tune in to broadcasts from the Proms. I can't remember specific pieces that made a big impression; my recollection is more of associating those long, light nights with the sound of orchestral music floating up the stairs to the bedroom that my siblings and I shared. In our teenage years, marking the end of the season by watching the Last Night on television became another family ritual. When as a student I first visited London in the hot summer of 1976, the Royal Albert Hall (RAH) was top of the list of places I wanted to see. There was no time actually to go to a Prom, but the experience of walking round the exterior of the terracotta and cream building that I'd seen on TV or photographed in the Radio Times so many times did not disappoint.
Little did I imagine that I would one day be as familiar with the RAH and with the Proms as I am now. I've queued to stand nose-to-shoulder with the people around me in the Arena, craned over the topmost balcony to catch a glimpse of the stage, stretched flat on the floor at sparsely attended late-night performances, sampled corporate hospitality in the boxes, squeezed into corners behind TV cameras, and sampled the variations in acoustic balance from every compass point of the stalls. Unforgettable performances have included Janet Baker singing Sea Pictures as surely Elgar must have dreamed they should be sung; the coruscating premiere of James MacMillan's percussion concerto Veni, veni Emmanuel; the astonishing virtuosity of the combined choirs of the English Concert and Academy of Ancient Music in Handel's Dixit Dominus; an overwhelming Mahler 8 in the centenary season; and a Last Night when the Grieg piano concerto was played posthumously by Percy Grainger, through the medium of Rex Lawson and his pianola, with a life-size cardboard cut-out of Grainger propped on the stage nearby.
Great concerts are at the heart of the BBC Proms, and culture minister Margaret Hodge scored a spectacular own goal earlier this year when she criticised them for not attracting audiences that reflected the diversity of contemporary Britain. Anyone can feel at home at a Prom, whether they choose to arrive in a limousine and sit in splendour in the grand tier, or turn up on a bike and stand in the Arena in a T-shirt and shorts. If you are trying to encourage your pupils to attend more concerts, there could be no better place than a Prom (with apologies to those who do not live within reach of London) for them to start. The tickets are cheap and the audience is always full of young people.
And, as Samara Ginsberg explains in her article on page 20 of this issue of MT, the BBC is doing more than ever before to enhance the Proms concert season and attract new audiences with introductory talks, films, workshops, the Proms Family Orchestra and even a ceilidh, not to mention the inaugural Dr Who Prom and transmissions via the BBC iPlayer. This level of engagement with the public is a long way from the radio broadcasts from a distant capital city that were the soundtrack to my summers, but it is an object lesson in education and outreach. The Proms are for everyone, whether they are a season ticket holder or an internet surfer. Enjoy.
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