When Horatio Chen travelled from the Shandong province in northeast China to study town planning at University College, London, in 2019 he was determined to experience an English summer season. Ascot, Wimbledon and the Lord’s Test match were all enjoyed, as were his first two visits to the Royal Albert Hall to hear the Proms. He liked them so much he resolved to hear more in his second summer, then, well, you know what happened.
The Proms have never been cancelled, not by war nor pandemic, but the 14 concerts laid on at short notice last year were in an empty hall. The 1,400 who normally queue each day for standing tickets in the arena or gallery had to cheer and stamp their feet at home. This summer they are back, although the queue is not, and some, like Chen, are anxious to make up for lost time.
“I’m hoping to do the entire thing,” Chen, 19, says as we talk on Sunday night, when Mozart’s final three symphonies were performed by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. And by all he does mean all. He had been there that afternoon for an organ recital on Old Father Willis, the hall’s majestic 9,999-pipe instrument, and intends to do every matinee recital in Cadogan Hall as well as the full evening programme, including, if he is lucky in a ballot, the Last Night on September 11.
It had been 20 years since I last stood at the Proms. A challenging night on the legs in the company of Ligeti and Bartok had led me to sit in the cheap seats on my half a dozen annual trips since. Being in the arena does give a superb view up the principal violinist’s nose, though, as well as excellent sound and a sore back. The woman next to me used the pause between movements to show that she could still touch her toes; on longer nights, some might jiggle awkwardly after losing all feeling in theirs.
Duncan Orr, 60, wouldn’t sit if you paid him. A friend had offered him a seat in his box for Sunday’s Mozart, but he turned it down. “I only like promming,” he says. “It’s the best place to hear the music and be sociable.” He has been attending 30 or 40 Proms a year since 1983.
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Lee McLernon reckons he has been to more than 1,000 and had a seat for only two of them. “Nothing beats the experience of standing in the arena,” he says. Even on hot nights? “Especially then. People get on better when it’s uncomfortable. There’s a spirit of going through it together.”
McLernon, 46, had been first in the queue at 9am for the second Prom, a Broadway mix, on Saturday, and intends to resume his 20-year run of attending the Last Night, for all but three of which he has made the front row in the arena. He is not always bothered about being up close, though. “I have learnt that for some concerts there are parts of the hall where you get better acoustics,” he says. “I’ll stand somewhere different for a Wagner, say, than I would for a violin concerto.”
His first Prom was Beethoven’s Pastoral and Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde in 1996 and he has gone to 50 or so each year since 2000, ever keen to hear new or unfamiliar works. “I’m not one of those who wants to say I did them all,” he says, “but I do enjoy the concerts you might not otherwise have gone to.”
Alice Harberd, 26, similarly enjoys concerts that would not appear elsewhere, although she concedes that this is an odd thing to say at a Mozart triple bill. She and her friend, James Potter, a 32-year-old conductor who dreams of playing at the Proms one year, will decide what to attend each day on a whim. Harberd first prommed when she was 13. “You can’t beat the vibe in the arena,” she says. “Though I will sit in the gallery, where it’s a bit more bohemian, for a cooler prom, like the Nina Simone one in 2019.”
In normal years, most standing tickets are sold on the day, the queue winding down the steps, past the Great Exhibition Memorial and along Prince Consort Road. That has gone this year. Tickets to promenade, costing £7.12 including a booking fee, must be bought online from 9am on the day of each concert.
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Numbers are restricted to 800 as a result of the stage being expanded to allow distancing for musicians and the camera boom being moved into the arena, with some being offered places in the choir seats. Those who want the best spots can arrive from 9am to receive a raffle ticket giving the order of admission when the doors open 90 minutes before the concert. Uncertainty over the programme means that there is no prommers’ season ticket, which in 2019 had cost £260.
For Chen the cost is not the only reason he stands. “It’s the only proper way to do it, isn’t it?” he said. “You are right in the heart of the hall and when you turn round and see the dramatic architecture rising above you and the thousands in their seats you feel like you’re part of the performance.”
Malcolm Sargent, who conducted 514 Proms in 20 years as the festival’s chief conductor, once wrote that the promenader “comes not to judge between this performance or that; not to listen for slight defects in the playing . . . he comes to ‘enjoy’ the music. And the promenader is right.”
They realise that they are privileged to occupy the best place in the house, where the stalls would be, for the cheapest price. Snobbery is barely known here, nor criticism. Prommers generally want the evening to go well, clapping the effort even when they don’t enjoy the music.
They also delight in their participatory traditions such as the cries of “Heave! Ho!” when the piano is wheeled on, the cheers when the leader plays an A on it for the orchestra to warm up, as raucous as if Daniel Barenboim had just announced a third encore, or the ritual stamping of feet when the conductor has not milked their appreciation enough.
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There is a certain amount of hamming it up. The novelist Compton Mackenzie may have had a point when he wrote in 1946: “I suspect the audience is applauding itself as much as the musicians.”
Yet they do good work. McLernon is chairman of the Promenaders’ Musical Charities group, who have been collecting for good causes since the 1960s. There used to be a wooden donations box passed around the arena; more recently they have had volunteers standing with buckets at every exit, which enabled them to increase their fundraising from £2,000 in 2001 to £120,000 in 2019.
This year, to prevent congestion as people leave, there will not be a physical collection, but they have set up a donations page on their website in aid of Help Musicians and Young Lives v Cancer (what used to be CLIC Sargent). The running total, normally announced at the interval with a cry of “arena to audience”, will not happen this year, since some may not appreciate shouting.
“The essence of promenading is to have fun when the musicians are not playing,” McLernon adds, “but be in rapt silence when they are. Musicians often say we are the best-behaved audience they perform before.” Marin Alsop, who conducted the Last Night in 2013, has called them “the dream audience”, while the British conductor John Wilson has praised the eclectic mix of ages and experiences. “I wish every audience was as varied,” he said.
Daniel Meyer, a violinist for 35 years in the BBC Symphony Orchestra, says it was wonderful to see so many familiar faces at the First Night last Friday. “They bring an unrivalled enthusiasm and intensity of listening I have not found anywhere else,” he says. “Their heartfelt shout of ‘it’s nice to be back’ echoed all our feelings.”
You can donate to the Prommers’ charities at promenadersmusicalcharities.com
