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Proms supremo steps down as the music strikes up: Swansong for Wright as Radio 3 chief moves to new role at Aldeburgh festival
[July 17, 2014]

Proms supremo steps down as the music strikes up: Swansong for Wright as Radio 3 chief moves to new role at Aldeburgh festival


(Guardian (UK) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) The performance of Elgar's The Kingdom that opens the BBC Proms tonight is more than usually significant. As well as launching the world's biggest classical music festival, it also signals the end of Roger Wright's tenure as Radio 3 controller and director of the Proms.



Wright leaves the BBC to take up the role of chief executive at Aldeburgh Music, with responsibility there for the annual Aldeburgh festival. With no successor in place, Radio 3 editor Edward Blakeman is taking on the role of acting Proms director Up to now the succession of Radio 3 controllers and Proms directors at the BBC has been skilfully managed. The two roles have been neatly dovetailed, with a series of appointees given the time to get to grips with the radio station while their predecessors carried on running the summer jamboree, before eventually taking on both roles.

But now, for the first time in many years both posts will become vacant simultaneously, leaving a vacuum that may prove difficult to fill. Steering a steady course for Radio 3, which balances the conflicting imperatives of maintaining audience share and upholding the quality and breadth of its output, something that Wright has achieved well, would be enough of a challenge for anyone; taking responsibility for the biggest classical music festival in the world on top of that demands something rather special.


The corporation has recognised the problem by deciding to appoint a Radio 3 controller before it looks for a new Proms supremo. No shortlist of candidates is expected before the end of next month ,but if anyone presents themselves as capable of fulfilling both roles straight away, then they will be appointed to both, and that will be that.

It's hard to imagine there are many candidates with the qualifications to do both jobs from the start. One possibility might be Stephen Maddock, currently running the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, who worked in Radio 3 (and for the Proms particularly) before moving into orchestral management; another would be Graham Sheffield, director of arts at the British Council, who was once a BBC producer.

If the two jobs are split then the possibility of appointing a younger, up-and-coming Radio 3 controller who might take over the Proms in a few years' time (just as their predecessors did) might seem an attractive one. Either Tom Service, well known to Guardian readers as a writer and blogger and to Radio 3 listeners as presenter of Music Matters, or Gillian Moore, the head of classical music at the Southbank Centre who is generally credited with preserving what remains of the SBC's reputation for serious music-making, might fit that profile Whoever is appointed could then work alongside someone with broader festival and international programming experience. Such an arrangement might appeal to Paul Hughes, successful and imaginative manager of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, or Clive Gillinson, who used to run the London Symphony Orchestra. Another possibility is Serge Dorny, formerly in charge of the London Philharmonic, and about to leave the Lyon Opera, and as an outsider there's Jonathan Mills, who steps down next month as director of the Edinburgh International festival, and might just fancy the range of musical possibilities that Proms could offer him. It's going to be an intriguing few months post-Wright.

* The Proms run until 13 September.

(c) 2014 Guardian Newspapers Limited.

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