BBC Ensembles

‘We are in a fight, and we need to ensure that classical music remains part of the beating heart of our country, and of our culture’, said Sir Simon Rattle, speaking to the audience in the Barbican Hall, London, on 23 April, before conducting the BBC Singers in a spell-binding performance of Francis Poulenc’s Figure humaine

Written in 1943-44 in occupied France, this searing a cappella cantata for double choir sets texts from Paul Eluard’s wartime poetry, concluding with Liberté, a powerful expression of resistance. Unable to prepare a choir to perform Figure humaine to celebrate the liberation of Paris, Poulenc authorised the BBC Singers to give the work’s world premiere in London.

It was no accident that the enormously challenging piece had been chosen for the Barbican performance, an unexpected postscript to one of Sir Simon’s last concerts with the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) before stepping down as its Music Director. Most of the audience had booked months previously to hear the orchestra play a single work: Mahler’s seventh symphony.

Rattle explained that he had invited the BBC Singers to give this performance as a gesture of solidarity with them and the other ensembles whose future is currently under threat. ‘After the Arts Council’s swingeing cuts in November, which have affected all of us and left some extraordinary groups fighting for their lives, we were all stopped in our tracks by the proposed vandalism by the BBC, of the which the closure of the BBC Singers was only the tip of the iceberg,’ he said .

‘ When the two largest supporters of classical music in this country cut away at the flesh of our culture in this way, it means that the direction of travel has become deeply alarming. It’s clear we are facing a long-term fight for existence, and we cannot just quietly acquiesce to the dismantling or dismembering of so many important companies.’

Rattle went on to state bluntly that while of course everyone recognises that we live in a world and a country where people are struggling to feed and heat themselves, ‘ none of this is a force majeure. It is rooted in political choices. And we have to ask ourselves … what kind of country do we want to live in?’ Musicians, he added, have become ‘past masters of doing more with less. But the closeness to the edge means that as support is constantly cut, ere is no more room to manoeuvre … And as other political decisions affect music in schools and then music colleges, the vital organic pipeline that feeds our music will start to run dry.’ year that the BBC announced its ‘new strategy to strengthen its public purpose for classical music, delivering the best music to a wider audience, with a significant new investment in music education,’ with the aspiration of ’ ensuring that ‘every pound of licence fee funding works harder for the sector and for our audiences now, and in the future’. While committing itself to ‘reinforcing the distinctiveness of the BBC’s five unique orchestras, artistically, educationally and geographically serving their own audiences whilst fulfilling their collective role in providing the widest range of content across Radio 3 and BBC platforms,’ the corporation ’ also announced its intention of reducing salaried orchestral posts across the English orchestras – the BBC Symphony Orchestra (BBCSO) and BBC Concert Orchestra (BBCCO), both currently based in London, and the Salford-based BBC Philharmonic –‘ by around 20%’

This would be achieved by opening a programme of voluntar y redundancies across salaried posts in the three orchestras, with the aim of ‘creating agile ensembles that can work creatively, bringing in more musicians when needed and broadcasting from more venues in different parts of the country’

Simon Rattle was scornful about this in his Barbican speech: ‘Anyone with knowledge of how an orchestra actually functions will know you can’t reduce the membership by 20% by natural wastage or in any other means – it is then no longer an orchestra and also all the years of building up a team expertise have gone out of the window. This should not need explaining.’

Referring to the impact of the Arts Council’s funding cuts on companies such as English National Opera, he said that ‘ if you want opera to be experienced in more parts of the country, it is ludicrous to cut the grants of the companies who do exactly that … without an orchestra or chorus you no longer have an opera company … these are not things that can just be reassembled later, or bought in from Ikea.’

But it was the BBC’s announcement that its plans included closing the BBC Singers that provoked an instant, vehement and horrified outcry on social media and in the press. Most shockingly, the original plan was to terminate the contracts of the 24 members of the UK’s only full-time professional choir (as opposed to opera chorus) in early July Producer Jonathan Manners and Choral Manager Rob Johnston had to tell their colleagues that there would be no place for them in this year’s BBC Proms season.

The lack of consultation that had gone into this decision was evident from the fact that Sakari Oramo, chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, was one of the first performers to voice his anger publicly, tweeting that he was ‘disgusted’ by the announcement, that the ’ axing of the BBC Singers was an act of ‘blatant vandalism’ slotted in for them can only be found online ( bbc.co.uk/ proms/events/performers/725af6df-7fea-4130-bd19963a62313d2b)

Other conductors, composers, singers, cathedral organists, music educators, publishers, conservatoire principals and administrators quickly added their voices to a growing protest, with a Change.org petition to stop the closure reaching 150,000 signatures within a fortnight.

On 24 March the BBC announced that it had suspended its proposal to close the BBC Singers, that it was in discussions with the Musicians’ Union to tr y to find alternative funding models, and that the choir would after all appear at this year’s Proms. This was followed by an update on 13 April confirming that the corporation was also exploring alternatives to the proposed post closures in the English orchestras.

Lorna Clarke, the BBC’s Head of Music who has come in for a lot of the criticism aimed at the corporation, insists that nobody doubts the quality of the ensembles; in a difficult financial climate, she and her colleagues are simply trying to fulfil their obligations to licence payers by reaching more of them by investing in choral and orchestral music across the UK rather than concentrating resources in London. Meanwhile in Stratford, East London, the new studio building in the Olympic Park intended to be a new home for the BBCSO, BBCCO and BBC Singers is nearing completion, following years of discussion over the acoustic flexibility needed to enable them to share studio space with rock and pop musicians. Will the Singers ever move into it? At the time of writing, that seems to be anybody’s guess.

Enter Sam Jackson, the new Controller of BBC Radio 3, who joined Proms Director David Pickard to announce the 2023 Proms programme just five days after taking up the post. At a slimmed-down press briefing he addressed the elephant in the room immediately, explaining that discussions about the future of the ensembles were ongoing and confidential, but that he hoped a solution would be found and in the short term he was delighted that the BBC Singers would be taking part in his first Proms season. But the published Proms Guide which was distributed at the briefing and is now on sale in newsagents’ across the country revealed how the season was meant to look – in their pre-centenar y year the BBC Singers are absent from the index of performing groups, and a list of the concerts that have been hastily Author

Right: BBC Singers with conductor David Hill and composer Judith Weir at Southwark Cathedral

Below: BBC Singers at the Last Night of the Proms 2020