Classical music maestros are in uproar over the BBC’s decision to scrap the UK’s only full-time professional chamber choir and cut jobs for orchestral performers, warning the sector is grappling with a mounting funding crisis.
In its latest response to its own financial pressures, the corporation this week laid down plans to abolish the 99-year-old BBC Singers and reduce the number of salaried orchestral posts across England by about one-fifth.
The move is another blow to UK classical music. Glyndebourne this year announced it was unable to tour as planned as a result of a reduction in funding from Arts Council England. Britten Sinfonia, based in Cambridge, this week launched a £1mn appeal to safeguard its future after the ACE cuts.
Formed in 1924 as the Wireless Chorus, BBC Singers is renowned internationally as a centre of choral excellence. “The idea that the choir is completely going is really terrifying,” said Anna Lapwood, an organist and conductor who is director of music at Pembroke College, Cambridge.
Acknowledging the BBC found itself in a difficult financial position, she added: “It’s part of a bigger picture that we’re all really worried about.”
Leading musicians warned it was increasingly untenable for talented young people to develop a career in the sector.
Nicholas Chalmers, one of the leading conductors in the UK, who has led the BBC Singers at the Proms classical musical festival, said: “It’s like we’re destroying the very fabric of what our musical society is.”
“The signal from the top is this can’t exist any more and can be struck off with the stroke of a pen at a board meeting . . . we’re going to close orchestras, close choirs, and there’s not actually going to be a vehicle for you as a professional musician.”
Deborah Annetts, chief executive of the Independent Society of Musicians, said “most of the sector is truly stunned” by the scale of the corporation’s cuts.
Sakari Oramo, chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, wrote on Twitter: “I am disgusted by the BBC announcements. The axing of BBCSingers is an action of blatant vandalism.”
The BBC is hunting for ways to save money after government ministers froze the television licence fee that funds the corporation for two years, despite upward pressure on costs.
Simon Webb, the corporation’s head of orchestras and choirs, told the Financial Times that “every part of the BBC has to respond” to a real terms reduction in licence fee funding.
“There are a lot of challenging decisions being made across the sector. My priority here is to respond in a way that maintains our position in the classical music sector. Our audiences need to be receiving the highest- quality music within the financial restraints that we have.”
While the decision had been “signed off within the BBC”, Webb added the corporation had begun a consultation about the process with unions on Friday.
Naomi Pohl, general secretary of the Musicians’ Union, said she was hopeful the BBC would reconsider. “I think they’ll have been surprised at the extent of the reaction.”
Pohl noted that the Singers had a relatively small budget. “It’s got a fantastic reputation, including for performing new work.”
The Singers had been due to move to the BBC’s new facility in the East Bank development in Stratford, London. Webb said the project remained “on track”.