The Long View | If the BBC cares about the regions, the Concert Orchestra must move south west

You can always rely on the BBC to fudge an announcement. The corporation told us two weeks ago that it planned to move the London-based BBC Concert Orchestra out of London. It just hadn’t quite decided where. One other thing it hadn’t quite got around to doing was informing the members of the BBC Concert Orchestra. Easily done, given the Corporation’s general management appear not to be aware its orchestras even exist.

I feel for those musicians who have built their lives in London and face redundancy or uprooting. Outside the orchestra’s ranks, only a fool would disagree with the decision to relieve the capital of one if its eight full-time orchestras. If the delay in announcing the destination is connected to finding the BBCCO its best possible new home, so be it. I sincerely hope that home is not, as the grapevine is suggesting, in the north of England.

If you draw a latitudinal line under Birmingham, there’s only one full-time, salaried orchestra underneath it in England outside London – the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. There are five in the north of England in addition to many more project-based ensembles.

Bournemouth is closer to London than to Plymouth, where I grew up, 125 miles further west. Bristol, where I went to boarding school, is the most culturally and economically significant city in northern Europe without its own full-time orchestra. As if to tease music-loving Bristolians about the fact, it has a concert hall perfect for one. It also has a huge BBC production centre. Just saying…

Music provision in the south west is appalling. The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra has tried valiantly to serve the entire region, an area that includes the colossal combined square mileage of Cornwall, Devon, Somerset and Wiltshire as well as its home patch of Dorset. But it has always had too much ground to cover, which might be one reason it has never had a permanent residency in Plymouth, the biggest city in the third biggest county in England and truly a town without music.

I love the north of England. I studied in Liverpool because I knew I’d get an unparalleled cultural experience and then moved to Manchester because I sensed I’d get a job there – so full is the city with orchestras, ensembles and music schools. When it comes to arts provision, we have to stop assuming that ‘levelling up’ means heading exclusively in a northerly direction. The area crying out for cultural equality is the south west, and the needs become greater the further west you travel.

For a while in the early 2010s, the Philharmonia lent a hand to its Bournemouth Symphony chums by coming down the A38 now and again, even stopping off once or twice in Plymouth. In the process of trying to secure more funding for residencies in the area, the orchestra commissioned research from YouGov that revealed the south west of England has the highest proportion of classical music listeners in the UK – 86% of adults. The BBC Concert Orchestra plays far more than classical music, which would presumably push that potential audience reach even higher.

It’s one thing having the LSO or Philharmonia visit Colston Hall or the Hall for Cornwall every blue moon, its coach screeching away almost before the applause has died down. It’s quite another embedding an orchestra in a town, letting its work seep into the creative consciousness of a place and fostering a sense of pride and ownership among the people there. In Exeter, it’s hard to feel ownership of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra when it carries the name of a town two hours’ drive away.

Imagine the focus that the BBC Concert Orchestra could bring to a city with no comparable live music provision, broadcasting nationally from it every Friday night. Imagine how many school children in Devon and Cornwall would get to hear and interact with a live orchestra if they had one based somewhere nearby. Imagine how it would transform the instrumental teaching landscape of the reason.

The orchestral sector is changing fast, as witness the OAE’s decision to base itself in a school and the general awareness that successful orchestras are those with a strong local focus. A BBC orchestra in the south west would reward the music-loving people of the region for their stretched patience. Given the beauty of Devon and the buzz of Bristol, it might prove an easier sell to those poor musicians, too.