The 2016 Proms Season: what are your thoughts?

[Norrette]

It's possible RAH may have killed the Golden Goose.

The Barbican sent me a free catalogue of their season for Sep 16 to Jun 17 (I had just attended one concert there this year). They seem to have re-discovered classical music. I've just been flicking through it. They have a great program and some well known names conducting. I'd say about 95% of their performances have seats capped at £42 (even Rattle, Gergiev and some good soloists etc) and of course it's a smaller venue. There are even discounts of 15-20% on multi-buy tickets.

...and it's £3 booking fee for as many tickets as you want.

[VodkaDilc]

I bought my Proms Prospectus on the way to the airport and have been away for the last ten days or so. I have therefore not followed any press coverage of the music on offer and I have not yet trawled through the comments here. So these are my impressions:

I groaned at first when I saw all the gimmicky concerts, but I suppose we have to sigh and move on. Otherwise I made a shortlist of eight concerts I would consider going to, including three at Cadogan Hall; I later pruned my list to five:

Weill/Gruber at Cadogan Hall.
The Philharmonia/Mahler concert the same night.
Barenboim's Wagner.
Christie's B Minor Mass.
Dudamel (what hope for getting tickets for that? - unless my luck last year, of getting on the waiting list at number 40 at 9am is repeated - most unlikely.)

I would have loved to see Louis Lortie, but the programme just did not appeal. And Boris would have been among them, if I had not seen it a few weeks ago at Covent Garden.

If I can get decent tickets for those five, I will be delighted.

[teamsaint]

reading about Dudamel, and with mention of ticket prices mentioned upthread, there do seem to me to be elements of the economic madhouse in some areas of classical music.

[Simon B]

Filling in the planner thingy and then looking at the bottom line does rather provoke the following:

Being the sort of person who likes letting facts get in the way of a good argument I thought I'd have a dig for some data to confirm this. Taking side stalls (not the most expensive seats, but at the upper end) and including all the sundry made-up charges it looks like this:

	2016	2015	2014	2013	2012	2011	2016/2011	2016/2015	Average Annual Inflation 2011:2016
Berlin Phil/Vienna Phil kind of thing:	£61.16	£56.58	£56.58	£56.08	£43.84	£42.84	+43%	+8%	+7.5% pa
Mild exotica (First night, BBC orch doing an opera etc):	£40.76	£36.18	£36.18	£35.68	£33.64	£32.64	+25%	+13%	+4.5% pa
Standard fare (BBC orchestras/RLPO/NYO etc):	£30.56	£28.02	£28.02	£25.48	£25.48	£24.48	+25%	+9%	+4.5% pa

Those are whopping increases over 5 years, particularly for the big name events, including a further ~10% increment just since last year.

As we know, day Promming tickets are up by 20% this year, though they have been static for a long time prior.

There's no escaping the conclusion: Rapid and apparently ongoing inflation. Have costs really increased that much? Or is this more reflective of an attempt to offset steep cuts in BBC funding with extra ticket revenue? Is any of the relevant data in the public domain?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Bravo, Simon B - and many thanks

[Cockney Sparrow]

I agree these are huge price hikes. But my assumption has always been that the Proms don't make money for the BBC, so the increase would be to decrease the cross payment from BBC budgets (which, yes, are most certainly under pressure). The accounting for the costs (BBC orchestras who would still be paid, doing something else) could be treated in various ways so it is even more difficult to speculate what any set of accounts for the Proms would show.
Thanks for the analysis. I have no sense of the ticket prices for the outreach/cross genre - i.e. BBC self-promotion-marketing-speak-themed "BBC Proms" but i wonder if they have the same price inflation - are the audiences they attract in, seen as willing to pay the same sort of prices as the audiences for the Proms proper (the Henry Wood Proms).

[Colonel Danby]

If I have to sit (or stand) through another Proms season 2016 of concerts including Debussy's 'La Mer', Holst's 'The Planets' and Stravinsky's 'Rite of Spring', I shall screawm and screawm and screawm until I am sick. I can, you know... (apologies to Bonnie Langford, by the way).

And there they are, hauled out by the BBC over year after year. They are great works certainly, but surely perhaps an absence for good behaviour just once in a while might be a good idea?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

"Thkweem", perhaps?

[Serial_Apologist]

"Thkweem", perhaps?

"Mummy lithpth; and Daddy lithpth... but I don't lithp!"

[ahinton]

"Mummy lithpth; and Daddy lithpth... but I don't lithp!"

It might presumne an awful lot of lithium if they all did...

[ahinton]

screawm

Initially I misread that as "screw'em"...

[teamsaint]

Maybe classical music is too in thrall to the big and very expensive names ?

[PhilipT]

But my assumption has always been that the Proms don't make money for the BBC, so the increase would be to decrease the cross payment from BBC budgets (which, yes, are most certainly under pressure). The accounting for the costs (BBC orchestras who would still be paid, doing something else) could be treated in various ways so it is even more difficult to speculate what any set of accounts for the Proms would show.

There's something - not much - at the bottom of this page: http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/med...cts/promsfacts.

Other facts to bear in mind are: because of how the building of the RAH was financed, at most concerts several hundred tickets have already been pre-sold and the BBC get nothing; the BBC are required to broadcast a certain amount of live music and this is part of how they do it; TV rights for some concerts (notably the Last Night) are syndicated around world, presumably at some benefit to the BBC.

[Cockney Sparrow]

Thanks for that. Its:

Q Who runs the Proms and how much does it cost?

The Proms is entirely run and funded by the BBC through the licence fee. The total cost of the BBC Proms season, including hire of the Royal Albert Hall, artistic costs, management and extra events, is approximately £10 million with around £5 million income including box-office.

At April 2015. So the Proms are "subsidised" (or costs assigned to them) to the tune of £5m with a gross budget of £10m (income £5m).

[ahinton]

Q Who runs the Proms and how much does it cost?

The Proms is entirely run and funded by the BBC through the licence fee. The total cost of the BBC Proms season, including hire of the Royal Albert Hall, artistic costs, management and extra events, is approximately £10 million with around £5 million income including box-office.

They get all that lot for a grand total of just ten million quid? Surely someone somewhere's either got his/her sums wrong or is fiddling the books or both?