The Proms celebrated their centenary in 1995. The past century has had an overwhelming aim- to present a wide variety of music to a massive audience, played to the finest standard. This is the ethos of the annual Promenade concerts held every August across London.

The first Proms was organised by Robert Newman- the owner of the newly opened Queens Hall. Newman was familiar with staging traditional orchestral performances, but he wanted to reach a greater range of people with a wider variety of music. Newman approached the celebrated Henry Wood to conduct.

Initially the concerts were known as ‘Mr. Robert Newman’s Promenade Concerts.’ Entry prices were inexpensive and audiences were permitted to smoke, drink and eat during performances. The concerts grew great crowds from across London, from a variety of backgrounds. Newman wanted to attract all classes because he saw his concerts as musical education- rising from traditional, popular music through to classical and modern music.

In 1927 the BBC began funding the Proms. Their subsequent radio broadcast increased the popularity of the concert and the Proms began to make money for the first time. In 1941 a German bomb destroyed the Queens Theatre and the Proms moved to the Royal Albert Hall.

Today’s Proms consist of more than seventy different concerts to suit a variety of different tastes. Many of the concerts are shown of BBC television and all are broadcast on BBC radio. The Proms feature some of the world’s greatest musicians and a sense of occasion and grandeur feature right across the concerts- culminating in the theatrical extravagance of the world famous Last Night of the Proms.