Lecturing on a course in Seattle has taken me away from London in recent days, and therefore from the excitement of Roger Wright’s first Prom season. As Wright himself said in a preliminary interview, if the season goes well he will claim it as his first; if it goes badly he can reasonably say that this is Nick Kenyon’s last, since Kenyon planned much of it. I suspect Wright is now counting his tenure from this season.
There has been a change of style. Experiments both with the repertoire and with the staging have been apparent, which meant taking risks not least with audience numbers. This may not have been entirely obvious in the earliest concerts of the series, since inviting Nigel Kennedy to play the Elgar Violin Concerto and Olivier Latry to play Messiaen’s organ music was bound to fill the place.
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