How to enjoy The Proms if you don't know anything about classical music

Every summer London offers an eight-week classical music bonanza in the form of the BBC Proms, held predominantly in London's Royal Albert Hall.

Last year two-thirds of the concerts were sold out, with 57,000 tickets sold in the first hour of booking. In other words, they are hugely popular. That is partly because the musical standards are so high, and partly because everything – from the easiest of easy-listening to the most demanding products of the avant-garde – can be found in the programme.

Will you be going? If not, have you ever thought of going? Or are you one of those who simply feel it’s not their thing? Survey after survey has suggested that a sizeable proportion of the British population never consider going to a classical concert, on the grounds that they wouldn’t “understand” it.

In this respect we are unlike the rest of Europe. Go to an open-air performance of Aida in the Roman amphitheatre in Verona and you’ll find almost everybody has come equipped with cushions, candles and a bottle of wine, ready to sing along with the choruses they know by heart. And that’s not just the bourgeoisie – it’s ordinary working-class people in huge numbers, having a fun night out under the stars, on the wings of classical music.

But do we need to “know” about classical music to enjoy it? For one quick answer, look at the way advertisers use it as a sales tool. Hovis sold bread with the aid of Dvorak’s New World Symphony for decades. British Airways trade on the charms of the Flower Duet in Delibes’ opera Lakme, Hamlet cigars trade on Bach, Black and Decker trade on Rimsky-Korsakov’s crazy The Flight of the Bumble Bee. Car companies rely particularly heavily on classical music for their advertising: for example, Alfa Romeo ropes in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, and Hyundai uses piano sonatas by Mozart and Schubert to sell its four-wheeled Sonata. American Express trades on Bach’s austere cello suites; Vivaldi’s Four Seasons – thanks in part to Nigel Kennedy’s work in popularising them – are forever being pressed into commercial service, selling everything from household appliances to holidays in the sun.

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Here’s the point: in all these cases, music is being used as a hidden persuader – as something that works on the subconscious, rather than as an argument which operates at a conscious level. Because the less people know about the mechanics of music, the greater is its persuasive power. Indeed, conscious knowledge can actually inhibit our enjoyment of music: if we are consciously thinking about the structure of a symphony, or the ins and outs of an operatic plot, we are probably switching off that part of our brain that responds to it. And the advertisers want us to respond to it – positively, of course - on a subconscious level, while with our conscious mind we weigh up whether to lash out on that lovely new car. In other words, “knowing about” music is not necessarily an advantage: ignorance is bliss.

Moreover, there’s plenty of evidence that non-connoisseurs are drawn in large numbers to classical music when it’s presented in an operatic, crowd-friendly form. Audiences flock to big-screen broadcasts of operas from Covent Garden, and cinemas are packed worldwide with such screenings: last year almost a million people availed themselves of this opportunity, in 35 countries.

Meanwhile the Metropolitan Opera in New York is enjoying a similar vogue here in Britain, with live simulcasts in cinemas interspersed with interviews with the singers: there’s no nicer way to enter into the world of the doomed Madama Butterfly, or the heroically tragic Violetta in La traviata. Next season’s Met Live delights – at a cinema near you – will include Tosca and The Magic Flute.

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The point about the Proms is that you couldn’t wish for a more painless introduction into the wonders of the classical-music world. So where should the novice begin? This year, why not go for something it’s impossible not to like – Rodgers and Hammerstein’s big-hearted musical Oklahoma on 11 August? Or you might start on 4 August with a centenary tribute to Ella Fitzgerald and Dizzy Gillespie, starring singer Dianna Reeves and trumpeter James Morrison? Yes, that’s jazz, but it would allow you to get the feel of the Royal Albert Hall, to realise how convivial it is.

Then you should take the plunge into classicism at its most accessible, and listen to the Ukrainian-born pianist Alexander Gavrylyuk playing Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto. You will certainly know some of the melodies in this work, and its full-on Romanticism is irresistible. For another great Russian voice, go to hear Tchaikovsky’s Pathetique symphony: that composer’s music never fails to move us, and in this work does that with massive power. Brahms is another composer whose music speaks with absolute directness to the emotions: listen to his First Piano Concerto on 29 July, as performed by Britain’s top pianist Stephen Hough, or his majestic Violin Concerto as played by the Greek maestro Leonidas Kavakos. All these works are totally accessible.

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But if Beethoven is your bag, try his opera Fidelio. The melodramatic story seems to get more topical as the years go by – and as military juntas proliferate – and its cross-dressed heroine, here to be sung by the soprano Ricarda Merbeth, chimes perfectly with the mood of our times. And what about Mozart? There’s plenty here to choose from, including his lovely 14th piano concerto and a full performance, by a starry cast, of his opera La clemenza di Tito.

If, on the other hand, you want to dive into a huge piece of Viennese Romanticism, go to hear the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra play Mahler’s First Symphony; in the same concert you will also get Dvorak’s Violin Concerto – another surefire hit for any newcomer to classical music – with the peerless German violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter as the soloist.

But the essence of the Proms is best experienced by those who stand in the arena, where tickets cost just £6 – let no one accuse these concerts of exclusivity. And the reach of the Proms becomes ever wider. The Cadogan Hall in Chelsea now hosts small-scale chamber Proms each Monday lunchtime, while the major events become ever more adventurous. Choral music will be programmed for Southwark Cathedral, and music theatre in picturesque Wilton’s Music Hall in London’s East End. On 22 July, I shall be going up to Hull – this year the UK’s City of Culture – to catch a Prom performance of Handel’s Water Music in the city’s historic dock.

See you there?

The Proms runs from 14 July to 9 September (www.bbc.co.uk/proms)