David Pickard likely to bring evolution not revolution to the Proms

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/may/26/glyndebournes-david-pickard-new-director-of-proms

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So the BBC Proms has a new director in David Pickard – the down-to-earth, enthusiastic, deeply musical man who since 2001 has been general director of Glyndebourne. In fact, the journey from the herbaceous borders and evening gowns of Glyndebourne to the egalitarian-minded Proms will be less tortuous than one might imagine: Pickard’s instincts are for opening up classical music, and he has done much to loosen Glyndebourne’s stays – strengthening its education programme, commissioning works for younger people, streaming operas digitally and introducing cheap tickets for the under-30s.

Related: ​Glyndebourne chief David Pickard to head BBC Proms

Pickard will report to the new director of BBC Radio 3, former Arts Council England chief executive Alan Davey. However, the Proms brand is arguably stronger than that of Radio 3, and the series of hugely popular, informal, high quality and inexpensive summer concerts at London’s Royal Albert Hall – augmented by Proms in the Park outdoor events, TV broadcasts and every concert put out live on Radio 3 – is a key carrier of the BBC’s most obvious public-service values, a crucial weapon in the corporation’s armoury as it approaches charter renewal by January 2017. (Long programming cycles, however, will mean that Pickard’s influence won’t have worked its way through to the platform by then.)

More broadly, the festival has, since the 1920s when the BBC took over its funding, had a huge impact on the British musical scene through its commissioning of composers. And generations of music lovers – including Pickard – received their most formative musical experiences down in the arena, promming as teenagers or students with tickets as cheap as chips.

The perennial question with the Proms is: to reinvent, or to let the formula roll on? To revolutionise or quietly adjust? To accept that it is, fundamentally, a festival of 90-odd concerts, most of them given by symphony orchestras, with all the limitations (and possibilities) that that implies, or to question and redraw the boundaries?

Could, or should, a new director try to introduce some of the kind of pizzazz that, say, Alex Poots has sprinkled over the Manchester international festival, with starry collaborations and conjunctions between artforms? How far to bring in other kinds of music and new audiences. (This year, for example, Pete Tong hosts a Radio 1 Prom celebrating the music of Ibiza.) Labour politicians love to complain that the Proms audience is too middle-class; metalhead John Whittingdale, the new culture secretary, I feel sure, would love to see a heavy-metal Prom, and why the heck not? My instinct is that Pickard will be more of a gradualist than a shaker-upper. But we shall see.

The other part of the challenge relates to the byzantine power structures of the BBC. Pickard will not be his own boss. Aside from reporting to Davey, he will find himself plunged into a maze of heads of music, creative directors, music and events commissioning editors et al, as well as powerful TV executives who will argue that classical music on TV (especially contemporary music) is nothing but an excellent way to lose ratings.

He will need all his patience, diplomatic skills and fighting spirit to survive – and enjoy – his new role.