The 2025 BBC Proms season will begin on July 18 and continue through September 13, presenting dozens of concerts throughout the United Kingdom, and celebrating the tradition first started by Henry Wood in 1895. We conducted an in depth analysis of the 2024 Proms repertoire, and are doing so again this year to see how orchestral music programming is – and is not – changing across the pond.
The history of The Proms, which was created to bring the music to the people, performing free and open-air concerts that made music truly accessible, is that of inclusivity. Henry Wood, himself, conducted many works by women composers during his tenure. As classical music continues to grapple with issues of gender equity and white supremacy, there is perhaps no historically more significant place to intentionally create inclusive programming. Which is why this report is particularly frustrating.
The BBC Proms website offers a great deal of information for each of the 90 events that will be presented in the 2025 Proms season. Though the Proms offers a variety of performances – soloists, choirs, jazz ensembles, chamber music, etc. – we chose to follow the example of our repertoire reports for American orchestras and look only at the orchestral performances as we took into consideration the ways in which work by women is represented at this hugely influential festival. Orchestral performances are also the dominant concert type at Proms, which describes itself as “The World’s Greatest Classical Music Festival.” While we acknowledge that works by women are also being performed in other concerts – like children’s programming, and choral concerts – the focus of our work at Women’s Philharmonic Advocacy is to lift the work of women orchestral composers.
The Numbers
Throughout the 2025 Proms season 135 different composers will have works performed. Of those, 25 are women – a total of 18.5%. This is actually a huge decrease from what we saw in the 2024 Proms season, where women composers made up nearly 25% of all composers being heard.
This season there will be a total of 227 individual works being performed, and only 27 of those are written by women composers – a total of 11.9%. Here, too, is a decrease from last season, where works by women made up 14.8% of the total number of pieces.
One of the valuable pieces of information that the Proms website offers is the estimated time for each work, allowing us to gain a better understanding of what, and who, is being valued. The 2025 Proms has 5074 programmed minutes of music (which excludes two new works that don’t have timings listed) – almost 85 hours of music. Of that time, 354 minutes of music – a total of about 6 hours – will be works by women composers. Works by women will receive 7% of the air time. This number remains consistent with the 2024 season, when works by women made up 351 minutes of the 4,765 total, also equaling 7%.
It’s also worth mentioning that one of those works by women is Angelique Kidjo’s amazing African Symphony, which is timed at 80 minutes, the longest work by a woman composer in the program by far. (The next longest is Gabriella Smith’s Breathing Forests, receiving its UK premiere, at 28 minutes.)
If we remove Kidjo’s work as the outlier that it is, the average length of a work by a woman composer is around 9 minutes. To run the same calculation with the works of male composers shows that the average length of a work by a male composer is 21 minutes, with five works that are listed as 90 minutes or longer (Mahler’s Symphony No. 3; Delius’s A Mass of Life, Handel’s Alexander’s Feast, Shostakovich’s The Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, and Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro).
The composer with the most time is Shostakovich, commemorating the 50th anniversary of his death. There will be eight works heard over the coming weeks, with a total of 418 minutes of air time, far surpassing all of the works by women combined. Mahler comes in second with six works and 386 minutes of air time, also surpassing the total time that women have been allowed on the orchestral Proms stages.
Of the women composers they are including, only one, Caroline Shaw, has more than one work being performed. Even so, Shaw’s music will only be performed for a total of 17 minutes. Also of note is that of the 25 women composers, 9 are historic women, and represent a total of an hour and a half of music:
Grażyna Bacewicz – 14 minutes
Elsa Barraine – 17 minutes
Amy Beach – 5 minutes
Lili Boulanger – 5 minutes
Avril Coleridge-Taylor – 4 minutes
Ruth Gipps – 8 minutes
Augusta Holmès – 15 minutes
Charlotte Sohy – 13 minutes
Grace Williams – 7 minutes
While the Proms has promised to be proactive in commissioning works by women composers – the 2025 season will include three works by women that have been commissioned by the BBC – it’s disheartening to see so few works by historic women being included. There is a tremendous catalog of works by historic and living British women that would have enhanced the program in a variety of ways. There is, clearly, much work to be done.
It’s important to note that there are several works by women being performed in a choral concert, including Ethel Smyth’s “Komm, süsser Tod’ from Five Sacred Partsongs, Paola Prestini’s Fratres, after Palestrina, and Alma Mahler-Werfel’s “Laue Sommernacht” from Five Songs. As we are most concerned with orchestral performances, these works are not included in the totals above.
Conductors
Another data point we are always interested in is who is on the podium. It took until 2013 for Marin Alsop to become the first woman to conduct the Last Night of the Proms. The trailblazer for women in conducting, Alsop was followed by Dalia Stasevska in 2020. This year will see the third woman to conduct the Last Night – Elim Chan has the honor for the 2025 season.
Of the 51 conductors that will lead ensembles over the season, 11 are women, a total of 22%, and an increase from last year’s 19.5%. Recognition for an increase where it’s due, but this is not a celebration. The Proms is still far from equity. These 11 women will conduct a total of 78 works (34% of the total works being performed), but only for a total of 914 minutes of music (18% of the total) – and this is with a woman conducting the Last Night. It is notable, too, that these 11 women will direct 37% of all of the works by women that will be heard during the season.
The women conductors that will be at the orchestral podium this season are:
Anja Bilhmaier
Anna-Maria Helsing
Chloé van Soeterstède
Dalia Stasevska
Delyana Lazarova
Elim Chan
Marie Jacquot
Miho Hazama
Nil Venditti
Tess Jackson
Zoë Beyers
In Conclusion
While there are some highlights in the programming – let’s not understate the importance and value of Kidjo’s African Symphony being featured at the Proms – it’s a disappointing Proms season on many levels. There is so much opportunity to capitalize on the very history and nature of The Proms to be creative in programming, to be equitable in whose voices are heard and how they are represented, and instead of using this terrific platform to build towards longevity and an equitable futurity, the programming of The Proms is moving decidedly backwards. As we continue to work towards a more equitable future, I’ve included below a short playlist of works by British women that would be a lovely – and important – addition to future Proms seasons. Let it be a reminder of the tremendous variety and diversity that exists in classical music, and perhaps a point of inspiration for the 2026 season.