sawyl | Clements on the Last Night

Andrew Clements nails the most depressing thing about the Last Night of the Proms:

The ever-faithful promenaders apart, I did wonder what proportion of the audience attended any of the other 70-odd concerts this year.

It's that disconnect, I think, which worries me even more than the cartoon jingoism of it all – the fact that one of the greatest music festivals in the world should be best known around the world for this caricature of British values, rather than the feast of superlative music making the season regularly offers.

Something exemplified by the split between the two halves of the concert, with the serious bit with all the potentially tedious classical stuff, like, y'know, Haydn's notoriously dull trumpet concerto, going out on Beeb Two; and all the flag waving nonsense — the stuff that people actually want to watch — going out on Beeb One...