Preparing for BBC Proms 2010

In the BBC Proms team we are counting down the hours to go before the 2010 BBC Proms gets underway. For many in our audience the Proms is something that the BBC simply broadcasts, but since 1927 the BBC has run and funded the festival.

The planning for the world's largest music festival begins years ahead and so we have been looking forward to the 2010 programmes for some time!

We live in an odd Doctor Who like time warp in which we are working on urgent things for the start of this festival today and also dealing with pressing matters for future seasons as far ahead as 2014.

The BBC Proms is a huge team effort. Although the Proms team itself is small, the co-ordination between our BBC orchestras and choirs, radio, TV and interactive colleagues is enormous.

I was amazed to look back ten years ago and see that there were less than a dozen televised Proms. This year there are almost thirty and they are on all five BBC TV channels - One, Two, Three and Four and the HD channel. As ever they are all broadcast live on Radio 3.

We are all really eager to get going and see and hear the start of Mahler's gigantic Symphony no.8 tonight.Inevitably, with something the scale of the Proms, there is unexpected news to which we have to respond quickly.

We lost our tenor soloist for the Mahler to illness earlier in the week, but have found a terrific replacement. Yesterday we were all deeply saddened by the death of the conductor Sir Charles Mackerras - truly one of the greats of his profession.He was due to be conducting two Proms this season and so we are dealing with replacements now.We will dedicate a Prom to his memory - next year he would have celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of his Proms debut.His passing is an enormous blow and I know that the Promenaders will feel the loss deeply and miss seeing him and hearing his magnificent work.

September seems a long way off now - but it will no doubt rush by quickly - and we will emerge blinking at the light on September 12^th and asking why the days are suddenly so much shorter but I hope with many wonderful musical memories to treasure and a realisation that the start of the 2011 Proms is only ten months away!

Roger Wright is the Director of BBC Proms and Controller of BBC Radio 3

• Full information about BBC Proms 2010