The Proms turns patriotic: ‘We need to celebrate everything that's good about this country'

Telegraph

23-04-2025

Around the turn of the millennium, celebrity oenophile Oz Clarke was on stage at the Royal Albert Hall for a Proms interval feature in which he suggested wine pairings for pieces of classical music. One of those working behind the scenes was 19-year-old Sam Jackson, who was dispatched to the nearest Waitrose with 'an envelope of used fivers' to select a few choice vintages for the segment. Jackson, who had never been to the Proms before, also knew nothing about wine.
'I stood there thinking, 'how do I tell people that I don't know what I'm doing here?' I think pints of Carling were about the limit of my alcoholic palette,' Jackson recalls. 'Obviously I picked some wine and came back, and that was that. And then I thought, 'How am I fortunate enough to be doing work experience at the Proms and be allowed in?' '
Now, more than two decades later, the 41-year-old controller of BBC Radio 3 is not just allowed into the Proms but, as of this year, he runs it; today, following the departure of Proms controller David Pickard last year, Jackson launches his first season in charge of the world's biggest classical music festival.
'Good grief, 19-year-old me would look and just find the whole thing, frankly, bemusing,' he says. 'The idea that this is what I would be doing today.'
Alas, there is to be no return for Clarke and his wine pairings. 'I mean, it sounds tenuous now, it was tenuous then,' says Jackson. 'I'm sure it was a fun interval feature, though.'
Sequestered in a small, windowless meeting room at BBC Broadcasting House, Jackson gives me a cheerful greeting — 'Welcome to the cupboard!' — and a cup of tea. Jackson joined the Corporation in 2023, so has had involvement in previous Proms programming, but this is the first time it is 'his' season.
As well as excitement, there are nerves. 'You just don't want to break it. There's that kind of 'Ming vase' mentality, because this is a festival that's been going for well over 100 years,' Jackson says. 'At the same time, I'm not paid simply to tread water with the Proms. We need bold new ideas.'
Among the eye-catching Proms he has programmed are a performance of Shostakovich's epic opera, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, only the second time it has been staged at the festival; the first all-night concert at the Albert Hall (running from 11pm-7am) since 1983; and a Prom with music inspired by The Traitors — complete with the BBC Singers (threatened with the axe two years ago) wearing cloaks. Some 70 artists are making their Proms debuts this year, including Japanese superstar pianist Hayato Sumino, Joe Hisaishi, the Japanese composer, and indie darling St Vincent.
Returning Proms stars include the likes of conductor Simon Rattle, pianist András Schiff and Louise Alder, the soprano. There are 21 international ensembles slated to perform — including the Vienna Philharmonic and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra — but, notably, none from America. Jackson says the cost of bringing orchestras across the Atlantic for a single concert is not 'a good use of licence fee payers' money', but hints that there may be 'a slightly more American tinge' next year, as the country marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
Jackson says he is determined to not just settle for the status quo. 'Because on one level, you could programme a season that was very inoffensive, very middle of the road — nobody would dislike it. But actually, we're here to take risks.'
It was a desire to do something different in 2020 that plunged the Proms into one of its biggest recent crises. It was leaked that the BBC planned to drop the lyrics from two staples of the Last Night — Rule, Britannia! and Land of Hope and Glory — apparently because of their colonial overtones. Following a swift outcry, including an intervention from then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson and thousands of complaints, the BBC was forced to backtrack. The songs have been part of the Last Night ever since and that remains the same under Jackson.
Did it take him long to decide whether to keep the usual fixtures of the Last Night in the programme. 'No, and I'm not in any way trying to duck your question, but I think that's above my pay grade. In the end, if the BBC decided to not have Rule Britannia! in, it wouldn't be a unilateral decision by anybody in a job like mine,' he says. 'I'm really mindful that the Last Night of the Proms, for many people, is their only experience of classical music in a year. We have, what, three-and-a-half million people watching it on BBC One, and it stands for something for a lot of people.
'The world's a scary place at the moment, and there's an awful lot of change going on around us, and I know that for a lot of people, it's really important to be able to to celebrate everything that is good in this country,' he adds. 'Now, people's definitions of what that is vary greatly. And what I really wish, is that when we have this conversation, it could just be done with respect. It's okay that people feel differently.'
Ultimately, he says that making everybody happy with the Last Night is 'a need that can never quite be met because of the all-embracing nature of who we're trying to reach'. But there will be additions to it, not least because Jackson says the 'final section has been exactly the same for a very long time'. Rachel Portman, the Brit who was the first woman to win a Best Original Score Oscar, has been commissioned to write a new piece, Gatherings, to be played before the usual favourites.
Though it is a thorny issue, always sure to inflame one side or another in the culture wars, Jackson relishes the debate. 'The moment that stops is the moment people stop caring. And we need people to care about what we do. We need people to pay their licence fee. As we head towards the end of our current Royal Charter, we need people to say, without the BBC we wouldn't have the Proms.'
If anything, Jackson appears to be doubling down on the patriotism of the Proms. This year, for the first time, the will be a 'Great British classical' concert, celebrating Elgar's Enigma Variations and The Lark Ascending by Ralph Vaughan Williams, as well as lesser-known works by Brits such as Avril Coleridge-Taylor (daughter of Samuel) and William Matthias, plus a new commission from John Rutter. It seems almost tailor-made for lots of flag waving. 'I think people should feel free to respond to any Prom in the way that they want. And I think if people end up coming along waving flags, so long as they fit within the Royal Albert Hall rules about how big your flag is, I would say brilliant, because that's people responding to the music.'
Some 72 of the 86 concerts take place at the Hall — with the others in Bradford, Bristol, Belfast, Gateshead and Sunderland — but most people will experience them at home. Each Prom will be broadcast on Radio 3, with 25 to be shown on television — including nine on BBC One and Two, the highest for 'a very, very long time'. Jackson prioritised trying to get more concerts on the mainstream channels because 'if we get it right, that's a million more people who will see that and will experience the Proms for themselves'.
As for the concert based on The Traitors which will see the hit-show's host, Claudia Winkleman, make her Proms debut, Jackson acknowledges that he could be accused of gimmickry. 'There is always a certain section of the commentariat who will immediately jump on something like that and say that it's not what we should be doing'. But he is unapologetic.
'I'm certainly not in defensive mode over it, because I don't think there's anything to defend. I think this is about taking a TV programme, the final of which has been seen by 10 million people and counting, a theme which fits classical music like a glove,' he says. 'It's about treachery and betrayal: that's Puccini operas, that's Romeo and Juliet by Prokofiev, that's all manner of different classical works, and that we know works brilliantly for telly and is a route into orchestral music for people… That all feels very 'Proms' to me, because we're not diluting what the Proms is.'
Jackson grew up in Milford, Surrey, and credits a 'really bohemian piano teacher' with getting him into music. He went on to read music at York University before joining Classic FM, rising all the way up to managing editor, before a stint at Universal Music Group's classical division.
The Radio 3 controller, who is paid a salary of up to £194,999, has faced accusations from some quarters that he is 'dumbing down' the station. Does it annoy him when critics say that? 'Oh of course I get annoyed! I just think it's such a lazy assertion,' he says. 'That does not stand up to scrutiny.' Over the Easter weekend, he points out, Radio 3 broadcast Rattle conducting the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in Bach's St Matthew Passion, live music from the island of Iona and choral evensong from Newcastle Cathedral. Plus, there is a 40-part series on modernism and a celebration of 30 years of Private Passions.
'I look at all of that, and I think, 'Well, Classic FM wouldn't do any of that.' And I'm not criticising them for it. That's not what they do. That's what we should be doing,' he says. 'Now, I would also say those people, who when they make those comments, are inferring that somehow it's wrong for Radio 3 to play music that people might like, I would also challenge that assertion. We are allowed to play Mozart and Bach. Nobody has the exclusive on that.'