Way back in the mists of time, in the decade when I was a card-carrying Prommer (1977–87), the BBC used to arrange (and maybe still does) a meeting between us regular Prommers and the Controller, Music – the man whose choices governed two months of our lives every year. Robert Ponsonby was the incumbent when I first had a season ticket and John Drummond was at the helm when I left London for a job in Paris. We never had the impression that anything we said made a blind bit of difference, but at least it allowed us to get things off our chests; all the Controller had to do was fend off our questions and comments with the oiliness then customary with the high functionaries of the BBC (they're all wonderful now, of course) and our silence was obtained for another year. (I remember Drummond contemptuously dismissing the music of Respighi as being beneath the dignity of the institution; Roger Wright, I gratefully note, does not share Drummond's snobbish ignorance, but I also note that neither the Concerto gregoriano for violin and orchestra nor Metamorphosen, both orchestral masterpieces, has yet been heard there.)