The BBC has come under fire from contemporary music enthusiasts in the UK after deciding to cut a three minute work by revered British composer Harrison Birtwistle from a television broadcast of the BBC Proms on Friday August 29 on its fine arts channel, BBC Four. The performance, featuring the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain – one of the Proms seasons’ most popular annual engagements – was recorded on August 10 in front of a packed Royal Albert Hall. Conceived as a program of orchestral showpieces from the 20th century, in addition to Birtwistle’s Sonance Severance 2000 the bill also included the ever popular Petrushka by Stravinsky, Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No 1 in D Flat and Witold Lutoslawski’s Concerto for Orchestra.

The BBC have tried to reassure those upset by the cut that the performance will be televised as part of a special BBC Four documentary timed to celebrate the 80th birthdays of two giants of the British contemporary music scene, Birtwitsle and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. However the implication that the decision to remove the piece from the television screening was to spare the British public from music deemed too challenging has riled some of the UK’s most...