BBC Proms, review: First night opens with Beethoven ‘mash-up’

Festival’s opening evening marks 250th anniversary of composer’s birth, Michael Church writes

‘Beethoveniana’ directed by Toby Amies (BBC)

★★★★☆

Well, here we are, with the inevitable promotional hype about these Proms-as-never-before. “Nothing stops this great festival,” trumpets the presenter, before inviting members of the unseen audience to drop in to the “listen party” for those who want to get in the mood with fancy paper hats. Let’s keep things in proportion: since Radio 3 has been broadcasting notable archive performances wall to wall for the past three months, it’s hardly an earth-shattering change for them to put on six more weeks of such things under the Proms logo. It’s just more of the same.

But there is one element of newness. The first item on the agenda, Iain Farrington’s Beethoveniana, is a Proms commission getting its world premiere delivered by 323 players of a Grand Virtual Orchestra, each of whom is performing in domestic isolation. The idea is to create a mash-up of all Beethoven’s symphonies to be condensed to nine minutes, with the Ode to Joy as its keynote, albeit with a new, more topical text.