Proms revel in glory

THE 100th season of the Proms, which ended last night, has been the most successful ever. Attendances for the 68-concert season averaged 86.4 per cent, with over half the concerts achieving more than 95 per cent ticket sales.

Twenty-five nights sold out completely, including the Last Night yesterday which featured Andrew Davis conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and Friday's performance of Beethoven's 8th and 9th symphonies by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Lorin Maazel.

The return this year to a feature of Sir Henry Wood's day, with the evenings devoted to single composers, also proved extremely successful with Brahms and Wagner evenings selling out. The programme for next year has yet to be decided, but the artistic team under John Drummond want it to look to the future, and have already commissioned 20 new works.

(Photograph omitted)