What’s missing from the Proms?

We might as well admit it: as much as we like to moan about the content of the Proms season when it’s published, the concerts themselves invariably deliver something special and something brilliant. It’s easy to run a finger down the listings and deliver an instant ‘disappointing’ verdict, not so easy to see the bigger structural pictures and logistical triumphs. When the cookie crumbles, I know I’ll be skipping down Exhibition Road after some brilliant evenings at the Albert Hall this summer – and that keeping an open mind as to which concerts that will prompt is part of the fun.

But if you sensed that was a caveat, then you’re right. Scanning a mildly interesting Proms season repertoire-wise, I’m left wondering where all the interesting orchestras have gone.  And I don’t mean the Berlin Philharmonic and the Leipzig Gewandhaus. Yes, they’re coming (two of only eight foreign orchestras at this year’s Proms, a quarter of which are youth or student ensembles), but they’re in London week-in week-out. The Gewandhaus even has a residency here. I mean the decent orchestras we don’t hear but who would rise to the occasion and offer something different – and arguably something far more exciting than the big-guns who are prone to resting on their laurels and delivering frankly boring concerts.

Two ensembles without many laurels to rest on are the St Louis Symphony and the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra, both on this year’s schedule. The singular Proms experience will be new to them and I’d bet good money they’ll revel in it and throw themselves into the atmosphere. Last year the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra delivered a far more exciting show than their illustrious Pennsylvanian neighbours from Philadelphia, who played a neat but dull concert two days later.

And what about orchestras who can bring something special from their homelands? There’s (joyfyully) a plethora of Sibelius this summer and conductors Mälkki, Vänskä and Storgårds, but it’s now five years since we had a Finnish ensemble at the Proms – even though Finland remains the per-capita engine room of the European classical music scene and its orchestras are playing astoundingly well. No Danish, Norwegian, Polish or provincial German orchestras, despite the fact that they’ve come to dominate the record market.

Without a time machine or a hotline to Proms director Roger Wright, it’s difficult to know if the festival is heading in a new direction: away from varied visiting orchestras playing core-classical repertoire and towards concert performances of operas, operettas and musical theatre and Broadway works. If it is, let’s hope it’s the right ingredient for the continued success of what seems to be an unstoppably successful event – and reflective of what Henry Wood and Robert Newman envisaged.

Personally, I prefer my opera in the opera house and my Broadway…well, on Broadway – where I can dip into it for two hours once a decade. It’s certainly not prevalent on Radio 3 and it doesn’t seem to me to fit the station’s documentary tone. As for orchestras, I guess I’ll have to head back to the Reading Hexagon or Cadogan Hall to hear decent foreign orchestras who are keen to impress. Which is a shame, because I’d rather hear them at the Proms – its unique atmosphere and alert, committed audience would ensure a memorable night for all of us.