The Proms season begins with suspicion, grows into habit, and ends with reluctant but predictable affection. The Last Night distills that shift: anachronism and ritual, embarrassment and necessity — nostalgia made empty and essential all at once. This year’s end of term party was certainly polished.
Preview
It’s undoubtedly the biggest night of the year: the Royal Albert Hall packed out in the seats, gallery and the arena, and millions tuned in on TV. Last Night of the Proms 2024 peaked at about 3.3 million viewers on BBC One — a figure that compares favourably with recent Doctor Who episodes and even some Christmas Day broadcasts, though it’s still only about half of what Strictly Come Dancing pulls in for its finals. For all its pomp, the Last Night sits closer in scale to a drama franchise than a Saturday night juggernaut, and still some way behind Eurovision, which over the past couple of years has attracted around 6–7 million in the UK.
This isn’t a judgment on the Last Night’s appeal. If anything, it’s evidence of the broadest audience appetite for classical music in the UK — audience reach as good as it gets in a fragmented media landscape.
Not the Proms, not classical music
The Last Night isn’t particularly representative of the Proms season as a whole, and certainly not of classical music in the UK either. Audiences and musicians don’t turn up to concerts in evening dress, high heels, or dinner jackets with wacky bow ties. We don’t let off balloons, whistle, or twirl Union Jack umbrellas. We don’t fake tears sobbing into a white hanky whenever we hear something slightly emotional, and concerts don’t end with the national anthem and the audience linking arms to sing Auld Lang Syne. The Last Night is an event genre all of its own which, for irregular or non-existent attendees of the wider season, will probably see reason enough not to attend a classical concert ever. The Last Night is an anachronism, a misrepresentation, and an embarrassment.
At the same time, the Last Night is the perfect conclusion to a long season of varied concerts that span the summer and, year after year, tug at the heartstrings.
The season-long relationship
When the season is announced in late spring those of us who keep a close eye on this annual tradition begin their relationship with an old trusted friend in the same spirit as parents might reluctantly get to know their offspring’s first boyfriend or girlfriend. In this way each Proms season can never and will never be as good as it was ten years ago; there will almost certainly be much wrong with it, the direction of travel towards a lesser season obvious in the pages of listings, each marginal adaptation to convention yet another intolerable chipping away at tradition and legacy.
When the season gets underway, and the regular check-ins either at the Hall or on radio take place, the relationship changes. We become accustomed to its presence. We feel ever so slightly guilty if we miss a night, promising to catch up as and when we can.
Then, come the final fortnight with the end in sight, there’s a quiet acceptance that we will have to part and so we’d better make the most of things because the air temperature drops and the rain starts coming. We approach the final curtain on this extended summer run thinking both unexpectedly and predictably that maybe this season wasn’t anywhere near as bad as we thought it would be, and that yes, some of the presenters are annoying, but really and truly you wouldn’t have it any other way.
This strange summer-long shift in a relationship makes a farewell party — itself dependent on the very traditions and conventions that cause so much ire amongst those who peer in for the first and last time on the Last Night — ideal and necessary.
An anachronism worth keeping
We don’t so much forgive the Last Night’s anachronism as embrace it. We didn’t think we needed a party when we looked at the running order in spring on launch night, but now we’re here it feels right. And, because we first saw it as kids, there’s a touching throwback to the past that makes watching in full live not only something we want to do but also something we need to negotiate with exasperated loved ones who would, in truth, really rather watch a musical on Blu-Ray than have to sit through the same tiresome, nauseating nonsense one more time.
Television party, concert afterthought
The experience in the Hall during the Last Night of the Proms is not like any other concert in the rest of the season. The pieces are short, the atmosphere buzzy. This is an event made for television, each element carefully timed to make the TV broadcast feel both seamless and live. That makes the concert experience bitty and very stop-start. There’s no real sense of having gone on anything developmental musically. The only real through-line is the shared anticipation of participation in a poignant moment at the end: the singing of Jerusalem, hearing Benjamin Britten’s exquisite arrangement of the national anthem, and saying goodbye to Auld Lang Syne.
Empty, and necessary
When the concert is over and the final party popper has exploded, so begins the trudge out of the Hall and towards South Kensington tube station (assuming there isn’t a strike — there is this year), accompanied by the nagging question about whether or not it was all worth the effort of attending, the money spent on the tickets, or the £15 for the large glass of Merlot at the bar. As necessary as the party feels, it can be quite an empty experience leaving the Royal Albert Hall after the Last Night. Only the Proms can make nostalgia feel this empty and this necessary at the same time. Better to be home and have something meatier cued up for after the broadcast.
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Review
The Last Night of the Proms has gone through a bit of an edit. A slicker running order, lighter music throughout, and consistently polished presentation made this three-and-a-half-hour broadcast event a competent affair and a mostly compelling watch.
Soloist Alison Balsom shone in the virtuosic third movement of Hummel’s Trumpet Concerto, though the lyrical second movement didn’t quite land. Her second-half appearance in the Bernstein needed tauter accompaniment from the BBC Symphony Orchestra to make the rhythm in the score zing. Here was a demonstration of a wider problem seen at various points in the programme. The Last Night doesn’t necessarily demand consistently high-quality playing, but when it falls short the gap between what we hear on stage and the hyperbole from presenter and pundits widens. “Superstar conductor” Elim Chan beat time consistently but might have expressed more in places.
The inclusion of Bohemian Rhapsody made sense in the Last Night running order. Opening the BBC One live broadcast with it made sense for hooking a TV audience, even if musically it still felt like a crossover gear shift. Seeing Alison Balsom stride off stage mid-performance in a long shot did make it appear as though she couldn’t wait for retired to get underway.
Bill Bailey’s percussion solo in Leroy Anderson’s The Typewriter was predictably underwhelming — sluggish and inaccurate made worse by the heavy promotion minutes before. His appearance at the organ for Auld Lang Syne made sense, though his skits at the keyboard interrupted the flow of proceedings, diminishing the emotional weight of the final goodbye.
Soprano Louise Alder lit up proceedings whenever she stepped on stage, demonstrating her considerable craft and switching genres with ease — an electrifying performer. It all looked good, it hung together, it mostly sounded OK — but heart and soul were missing.
Gallery
📷 BBC / Chris Christodoulou
Last Night 2025 Programme
Modest Mussorgsky A Night on the Bare Mountain (original version, 1867)
Johann Nepomuk Hummel Trumpet Concerto in E-flat major
Lucy Walker Today (BBC commission, world premiere)
Arthur Benjamin Storm Cloud Cantata (from The Man Who Knew Too Much)
Charles Gounod Faust “Ah, je ris de me voir” (Jewel Song)
Franz Lehár The Merry Widow “Vilja Song”
Camille Pépin Fireworks (BBC commission, world premiere)
Paul Dukas The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
INTERVAL
Freddie Mercury (arr. Stuart Morley) Bohemian Rhapsody
Dmitry Shostakovich Festive Overture
Lerner & Loewe (arr. Paul Campbell) Medley from My Fair Lady (Wouldn’t it be Loverly, Without You, On the Street Where You Live, Show Me, I Could Have Danced All Night)
Leonard Bernstein (arr. Simon Wright) Prelude, Fugue and Riffs
Leroy Anderson The Typewriter
Rachel Portman The Gathering Tree (BBC commission, world premiere)
Trad. (arr. Wood) Fantasia on British Sea-Songs
Thomas Arne (arr. Sargent) Rule, Britannia!
Edward Elgar Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 in D major, “Land of Hope and Glory”
Hubert Parry (orch. Elgar) Jerusalem
Trad. (arr. Britten) The National Anthem
Trad. (arr. Paul Campbell) Auld Lang Syne
Louise Alder soprano
Alison Balsom trumpet
Axelle Saint-Cirel mezzo-soprano
Bill Bailey typewriter
Brian May
Roger Taylor
BBC Singers
BBC Symphony Chorus
National Youth Choir
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Elim Chan conductor
Podcast
Recorded during the BBC Proms season 2025, Radio 3 Controller and Proms Director Sam Jackson spoke to Thoroughly Good about Radio 3’s new sound, recent listening figures (have they been spun or are they actually improving?), strategy, and his role as an audience-facing leader in a changing BBC challenged by funding, budget cuts, and future monetisation plans.
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