Evolutionary road

As Sepp Blatter has so affectingly remarked, the organisation he formerly headed needs evolution, not revolution. There is a consensus that this is also what David Pickard will bring to the Proms, when he takes over after this season. Of course, Pickard’s job is going to be more complex than Blatter’s ever was. The challenge for Pickard is that however hard he tries to please most of the people most of the time, the modalities of running the Proms mean that he cannot be friends with everyone — and for him there will be no short cuts.

What do we expect from the Proms these days? Despite all the flurry in the press pack, the underlying formula has actually become quite fixed in recent years. It remains an overwhelmingly classical music series, with a balance struck between completely unknown modern music (part of the BBC’s commitment to living composers); very big projects, such as the Ring cycle; a judicious sprinkling of well-loved favourites; a dart at one or two whacky out-of-the-box events, like the Radio 1 rapper prom this year; serious neglect of music written before 1700; and an ever-increasing involvement with modern technology, which this year extends to a Proms app.