BBC Proms 2015: Michael Finnissy, Tansy Davies and Christian Mason

Extract

It's hardly easy to integrate new music into the Proms, a classical music festival that is unique, in this country at least, in the way it manages to harness popular appeal. And it's probably all but inevitable that many of the festival's commissions end up being expressly ‘inspired by’ or written ‘as a complement to’ the mainstream big-hitters alongside which they appear. Given the inevitable presence on the bill of Mahler, say (or Sibelius this anniversary year), it makes a certain amount of sense that the new piece – yet to be written when its slot is assigned, after all – might aim to relate in some tangible way to the rest of the programme.