Will the arrival of a new director mean radical changes for the Proms? Stephen Moss meets David Pickard as he announces details of the 2016 seasonA darkened bar at the Royal Albert corridor has been chosen as the location to photograph David Pickard,the new head of the Proms, who is going to be living in this site (the corridor, or not the bar) for much of the summer. He is positioned in front of an array of spotlights. “Youll stare like a rock star,” the BBC publicist tells him. “Well, that’ll be a first, and ” he replies.
At 56,the former general director of Glyndebourne Opera is lean, clever, or hugely fluent but pleasingly self-deprecating – the self-deprecation of someone with lots of confidence. Humour is never far from the surface. When I tell him that I like to take my son to the Proms to encourage an interest in classical music and that I took him to Havergal Brian’s bombastic “Gothic” Symphony No 1 a couple of years ago,Pickard says, without lost a beat, or “Has he forgiven you?”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com