‘The world’s greatest music festival.’ If Daniel Barenboim can use that phrase about the Proms, then – despite being London-based and so susceptible to charges of bias – so can we. In scope and scale of repertoire and range of artists, it is unrivalled. When it comes to accessibility, the opportunity to turn up on the day and, for a modest sum, stand feet away from 
the world’s greatest performers is quite 
a selling point. As is the opportunity to tune in or log on to BBC Radio 3, BBC Two or BBC Four, or the Proms website to enjoy the concerts. Not that the Proms needs a selling point: 114,000 tickets were bought in the first 12 hours of sale.

All of which makes it easy to be complacent. To attend the Royal Albert Hall during the Proms – or indeed many other city-centre concert halls during the main concert season – might render talk of classical music being a marginal activity as somewhat absurd. But, in truth, it is in danger of becoming so. Knowledge about, and enthusiasm for, classical music in the wider world can be, frankly, limited at best. We need our champions. The Proms, with its knack for claiming swathes of general media real estate, is one. Daniel Barenboim is another. Without compromising his musical activities, he manages to root music-making in the wider cultural and social world, where it should belong, and where its greatest advocates of generations past would have found it. And, crucially, the wider world listens. This year Barenboim brings Wagner’s Ring to the Proms; Geoffrey Norris talks to him about that, as well as about his ability
to take classical music to new audiences.

Classical music always needs to embrace different ways of enthusing, inspiring and educating. The Proms does it, Barenboim does it, and so, too, does a Beethoven app from DG and Touch Press, a foretaste of the role tablet technology could play in classical music. The way we listen, and what we listen to, continues to evolve. And as 
it does so, we’ll continue to tell you about it – just as we have for 90 years now.