'An orchestra for this moment in time': The Proms Festival Orchestra

Every Proms season has its notable debutants, this year’s favourites including Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Malcolm Arnold’s fifth symphony. But 2021 is also the year of an as yet unheard ensemble: the Proms Festival Orchestra. Made up of invited freelancers, it makes its first ever appearance on 8 September, performing a somewhat more familiar fifth: Mahler’s. The concert will be conducted by Mark Wigglesworth, with Magnus Johnston leading.

Players were still being finalised in mid-August when Proms director, David Pickard, spoke to Classical Music to explain how the idea for the orchestra evolved. A key factor was the variability of pandemic restrictions which meant he wanted to leave some scope for flexibility in programming (the concert was billed as one of four ‘mystery Proms’ at the season’s launch). It also meant he was more or less obliged to use UK-based orchestras.

‘We then started to think about all the people that play orchestral instruments but actually still won’t be playing at the Proms,’ he says. ‘The freelance music world is absolutely huge and there are many players who play for the Britten Sinfonia or Aurora or whatever who are reliant on those orchestras getting together and then being picked to play in it. And also players who would normally be filling the gaps when you get bigger string sections, or the tuba players who are only going to be involved in bigger pieces. We started to think that these are people who have really suffered over the past 18 months by the bigger repertoire not being there and by not having a regular salary.’

Pickard asked orchestral contractor Hannah Bates, who works in that role for Britten Sinfonia, to assemble the players. ‘One of our starting points was to make sure we were going for people that were not regular members of ensembles. Then of course: aim as high as we possibly could. So there will be some session musicians in there; there will be people from all sorts of different backgrounds.’

Wigglesworth has had an input, as have the players themselves. ‘It’s being fixed in the way you’d expect: you go to your principal oboe and say, who would you like to play second with you? We’re not entirely throwing a group of unknown people together. There are of course huge advantages to players who play as a group day in, day out, but there’s also an excitement about a group of players coming together that may never have played together before as an orchestra and who enjoy doing that.’

Pickard reports that the response from players has been positive, many making it a priority, although others have had to decline. ‘The good news is the orchestral world is kind of getting back to normal, so there are some people we wanted to be in the orchestra who, good for them, aren’t free because they are doing another date.’

It is nonetheless a precarious moment for musicians, something brought into focus by the news, announced in August in a message to clients, that Julian Morgenstern intends to close the diary service he founded and has run since 1983. The imminent closure of Morgenstern’s – a source of gig bookings and point of contact for many fixers as well as a long established professional network – has dealt hundreds of players a new uncertainty, just when they were glimpsing signs of recovery.

Some may choose to transfer to the similar, slightly older Musician’s Answering Service (full disclosure: I am already an MAS client). Even then, it is unclear what effect the disappearance, if it does come to that or a buyer does not emerge, of such an established part of the industry ecosystem would have on fixing practices in general and the use of diary services in particular, potentially affecting MAS members too.

There are also wider concerns about the return to freelance working, some expressed in our February report. Lockdown has prompted abundant rhetoric promoting wellbeing and collegiality, equity and diversity on the one hand, and targeting negative issues like unnecessary hierarchies and gatekeeping on the other. It remains to be seen whether improvements will actually follow, once the pressures of professional life come to bear.

Organisations such as the Proms have a leading part to play in the kind of reset that follows. Certainly, Pickard sees his role as a forward-looking one, with a remit to refresh and renew, at least when it comes to who and what appears on stage. As such, he sees the Proms FO standing alongside the various other performers recently invited to the Proms for the first time.

‘We’re always looking to make sure it’s not always the same people on the stage, not always the same organisations, and looking to see what feels of its moment. The Manchester Collective might be a nice analogy: their Prom and that group represents, just as individual artists like Vikingur Olafson or Patricia Kopatchinskaja do, 21st century musicians.’

He draws another parallel with the National Youth Orchestra, since it too has a disparate membership that assembles for large-scale projects. That said, this ‘national adult orchestra’ may well be giving its farewell performance, Pickard reveals, just as it makes its debut.

‘It’s really important to say that I’d like to think that this is an orchestra for this moment in time. This isn’t the Proms saying: we need another orchestra; let’s put one together and it will be doing six Proms next year. I can honestly tell you there is no long-term plan for this orchestra, other than to say something very specific in this particular year. And, frankly, to express solidarity for those musicians.’

For more information on the Proms click here.