The programme announced today for this summer’s BBC Proms makes much of its return to business as normal. There are a full eight weeks of concerts in the Royal Albert Hall this summer, after two years of severe restrictions – in 2020 just a fortnight of live music was livestreamed from an empty hall; last year’s season was also truncated and given almost entirely by British-based orchestras. But it’s back to the usual formula this year, with a large-scale choral work – Verdi’s Requiem – to launch the jamboree on 15 July, and a traditional Last Night conducted by Dalia Stasevska, with cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason and soprano Lise Davidsen as the soloists.
But in other, less positive, ways things are just a bit too much like they were in 2019, when the season seemed lacking in adventure and overcautious in its approach. There’s very little feeling of enterprise and imagination in the 2022 concerts either. Programmes seem to have been planned in a distinctly risk-averse way, with attention devoted to making sure that every politically correct box is safely ticked, with the full range of family concerts, gaming and relaxed proms, but perhaps not enough thought given to what might be genuinely challenging or adventurous in what still insists on describing itself as the biggest classical music festival in the world.
