The Proms

Last week I went to a concert at the BBC Proms, my first in two years, and was reminded how much I enjoy this London cultural institution.

During the summer months when the concert calendar runs relatively dry, the Proms are always a welcome addition. For me, they also signal the approaching end of summer running as they do from mid-July to mid-September, but I like to think of them as a last hurrah before the autumn and the onset of a grey, sunlight-deprived winter.

I’m always amazed by people who have lived in London for years and never attended the Proms. My neighbour – a Briton by birth who has lived in London for most of his life – has never been to a Proms concert. However some of my expat friends go religiously each year. Certainly if one enjoys classical music they are not to be missed.

A brief history

At the ripe age of 116 this year, the first Proms concert was held in 1895 at the then Queen’s Hall in London, conducted by Henry Wood, who conducted the Proms each year until his death in 1944. The brainchild of impresario and Queen’s Hall theatre manager Robert Newman, the Proms were intended to bring classical music to a wider audience by offering more popular musical programmes through the less formal promenade arrangement (where the audience stands in the promenade area of the concert hall) and also by keeping ticket prices low. These elements continue to underpin the Proms today where there atmosphere is casual and there are some 1,000 standing tickets available at every concert for only £5 each. (Occasionally there is a bargain to be found in London and this is one of them.)

Originally known as “Mr Robert Newman’s Promenade Concerts”, the Proms were taken over by the BBC in 1927 and have continued to expand since then. Interrupted by war in 1940 with the bombing of the Queen’s Hall, the Proms moved the Royal Albert Hall, where they are still held today.


The Proms experience

Approaching the Hall as I usually do from the south, walking up Prince Consort Road, the grand, stately dome emerges impressively into view as I follow the bend of Kensington Gore. Inside, hiking up the successive staircases to reach the Circle level (what we North Americans call the “nosebleed section”), I noticed the banisters adorned with little golden letter A’s all the way up, in tribute to the hall’s namesake, Queen Victoria’s cherished Prince Albert. They seem a rather subtle reference to the Prince compared to the gaudy, gleaming golden statue in his likeness, forming part of the Albert Memorial across from the Hall, on the edge of Kensington Gardens.

Partly inspired by the design of ancient amphitheatres, the Hall always appears to me to be even more immense from the inside than it does from the outside. On each visit, after settling into my seat, I always take a few minutes to glance around and take in the ambience. Despite the number of people squeezed into the narrow seats, this is hardly an intimate venue and although I’m sandwiched between two gentlemen, somehow I retain a feeling of being surrounded by ample space. That is, legroom excepted.

The entire main floor of the hall is standing room only for people who are willing to forego comfort to see some top performers at a relatively close distance, although a handful of people choose to even lie down on the floor and skip watching the performers altogether. Oddly, every year a strange water feature is installed in the centre of the floor – what appears from my elevated section to be like an inflatable kiddie pool that North American parents often place in their backyards during the summer months. From where I was sitting it even had the cheap look of backyard summer kitsch, ringed by a rickety-looking fence and with mock foliage along the sides. Inside the pool sat a large plastic (or possibly inflatable?) green frog decoration with large crab-like arms reaching out before it. Bizarre.

The unusual water feature is reminiscent of the casual culture of the Proms that sets it sharply apart from regular classical-music concerts in the capital. The official Proms dress code is non-existent, the website encouraging people to ‘come as you are’ but I refer to it affectionately as ‘anything goes’. Aside from the standard attire of jeans and running shoes (called “trainers” in Britain) or those dreaded Teva sandals, I’ve seen people in everything from elegant summer dresses to a straw hat – a man wore one throughout the entire concert I recently attended – to a woman I spotted a few years ago shuffling through the corridor during intermission in her bare feet.

Although food, drink and smoking were originally permitted in the hall back in 1895, the only thing that is allowed today, according to the official website is soft drinks in “closed plastic containers”, allegedly for “health and safety” reasons. Water in plastic bottles is allowed and even encouraged in the Hall with water sellers wheeling around large coolers in the corridors and in the bar areas before the performance. However I have seen people bring thermoses with them to the Proms, filled with their own preferred mystery beverage, making me feel that I’m at an elaborate campsite rather than in a concert hall.

One ritual that does carry over from more formal concerts to the Proms is the tradition of eating of ice cream at intermission. The Brits seem to go crazy for the stuff, which is sold in miniscule pots at majestic prices. While the unsurprising favourite seems to be the Haagen Dazs Strawberries & Cream, I naturally felt I had to honour the ritual by indulging in a pot of Cookies & Cream instead.

Despite the casual nature of the Proms, the performers are often top-notch including renowned orchestras from around the world, some of the best conductors – Valery Gergiev, Sir Simon Rattle, and David Robertson, to name a few – as well as operatic talents such as Placido Domingo, Renée Fleming, Bryn Terfel and, at the concert I attended, Ben Heppner. The programming is also often ambitious, with certain Proms concerts featuring entire symphonies or, as in the one I chose, the entire second act of Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. The audience may be camping out in their picnic attire but these concerts are not necessarily for the faint of heart.

Photo of Royal Albert Hall from Wikipedia.com.