When the BBC unveiled its new classical music strategy last week, it did so using what can only be described as a thick and unappetising soup of W1A management speak. Its latest masterplan would, it said, “prioritise quality, agility and impact”. So far, it has not explained what this might mean in reality; there is vague talk of “investing” in unspecified education projects. What we do know, however, is that the money to do this will come from the paltry savings made by the axing of the BBC Singers, the UK’s only full-time professional chamber choir, and 20% of the salaried musicians in its several orchestras.
Coming after Arts Council England’s decision last November to cut funding to (among others) English National Opera and the Britten Sinfonia, the music world has reacted to this with understandable fury. Sakari Oramo, the Finnish conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, called it “blatant vandalism”. Neil Tennant, of the Pet Shop Boys, professed himself “shocked and disappointed”. Dame Sarah Connelly, the celebrated mezzo-soprano, described it as “crass, ill-informed and appallingly handled”. John Rutter, the composer and conductor, pointed out that Latvia, a country with a population of fewer than two million, manages to support a 24-strong full-time chamber choir. In response, the BBC wheeled out Simon Webb, recently appointed head of orchestras and choirs, to defend the move. His excruciating prevarication spoke for itself.
Musicians and music lovers alike are determined to fight back. An open letter, signed by Oramo and other BBC conductors, has been dispatched. Petitions have been launched.
Will the BBC buckle under the pressure? At this point, alas, it seems unlikely. Taking the arts to the people was in its remit from its very inception and yet for some time it has been obvious it believes some of the arts more “elitist” than others – and elitist is a word that makes it extremely nervous.
The fact that the savings the BBC will make by cutting these jobs probably amounts to little more than the sum it pays one of its most famous presenters annually holds neither shame nor embarrassment for its executives. Analysing the skills of Bukayo Saka isn’t elitist. Bringing the work of Franz Schubert to a new generation is.
But still, we must hope that someone, somewhere, listens. This is a huge and unforgivable miscalculation on its part. Classical music in Britain may still be thriving, but it is also a complex and fragile organism. If the decision to get rid of the BBC Singers is a personal crisis for each of its members, its wider consequences may prove to be far graver. To take just one example of how this works, as a choir that performs (brilliantly) a lot of new music, the BBC Singers help to sustain the work of a new generation of composers. Where do these talented people take their ideas now?
The BBC likes nothing more than to talk about diversity. But if music careers – jobs with salaries and reasonable prospects – become unsustainable in this country, young people, of whatever background, are unlikely to consider pursuing them. And the danger then is that classical music goes into a death spiral – at which point the BBC’s seeming notion that it is for the few rather than the many ceases to be just a highly patronising assumption. It becomes a bleak and painful reality.
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