One hundred not out for concert season that simply won't lie down

Wood - the founder and conductor of the Proms since the concerts started in 1895 - is snapped standing among the rubble, gazing across the building's shell and, I suspect, wondering about the future of the Proms, as well as remembering with enormous affection all the concerts he had conducted in that glorious hall.

He need not have worried. The Promenade Concerts quickly relocated to the Royal Albert Hall, the BBC returned to running it (which it had done since 1927, only stopping briefly in wartime) and the summer festival has run uninterrupted and successfully ever since, establishing itself as the largest music festival in the world.

Could it have happened without Wood? It is hard to imagine. He was an inspired choice to take up the baton in those early Proms days - a 25-year-old conductor who had not at that time built a significant reputation. He went on to conduct more than 5,000 concerts and more than 23,000 pieces.

Wood was born in Hitchin in 1869 and grew up in a cottage behind the shop on Oxford Street where his father sold model steam engines. It is remarkable to think of his career over the next 70 years being within a mile of his humble beginnings. Apparently, in the 1920s, after prolonged pencil sharpening, Wood would plan the Proms concerts over a bottle of fine red wine in a restaurant the same short distance from the Queen's Hall in those early family years. That is one of the few ways in which the concerts have changed today - fewer pencils and much less wine.

In his article in this year's Proms Guide, Andrew Green describes Wood as "the first British conductor of serious note, with an appeal to advertisers that saw him endorsing cigarettes as well as gramophone records". He certainly became a much-loved conductor, and news of his work spread abroad. During the Second World War, an Australian airman said he'd come to London to do two things: "Fly Spitfires and hear Sir Henry Wood!"

The violinist Yehudi Menuhin described him as "ebullient" and "vigorous" - and Menuhin also touched on a key part of Wood's outlook, which explains his desire to share his passion for classical music. He said: "I can't imagine anyone who had a broader base, and that came through not only in talking to him but simply by his presence. He was a broad man who spread space and strength about him."

Much as we might regard Wood now as a quintessentially British musical figure, he was much broader than that.He was a vital supporter and encourager of his British composing contemporaries but he also brought to the UK an enormous number of works from abroad, famously a number of Mahler symphonies and the world premieres of Schoenberg's Five Orchestral Pieces and Rachmaninov's First Piano Concerto. The statistics themselves are staggering - Wood conducted the world or British premieres of more than 700 works by more than 350 composers - but the detail shows his enormously wide-ranging taste and keen eye and ear for talent.

That commitment to contemporary music remains alive in the Proms to this day, with an ongoing focus on new work and what Wood used to call his "novelties" - those unusual and often new pieces which he wanted to bring to a larger audience.

It was the manager of the Queen's Hall, Robert Newman, who had the idea for a series of promenade concerts and asked Wood to be the conductor. Newman wanted to broaden the audience for classical music and Wood shared those ideals. Wood's first Proms programmes are unlike anything today. One glimpse at our recreation this year of the 1910 Last Night will show that. The concerts used to last about three hours and begin with more serious classics before the lighter music was given in the second half, often including Edwardian ballads or parlour songs. The audience used to walk around a little more than it does now, as well as eat, drink and smoke. You can only do that today if you tune in at home to any of the concerts live on BBC Radio 3, or the 30 screened on BBC TV. So Wood's name and vision have gone global, and it seems timely that we have made this year's Proms festival one in which we have particularly remembered and celebrated "Old Timber", as he was known by the Promenaders. We have included his orchestrations and transcriptions as well as many of the composers and works which he championed. When the chaplet is placed on Wood's bust in the traditional crowning ceremony at the start of the second part of the Last Night of the Proms this year, I trust that there will be an increased sense of the debt we owe him - as an improver of orchestral standards, who increased our orchestral repertoire, supported and nurtured contemporary composers and laid the foundations for the classical music world's desire to make classical music accessible.

Rose Newmarch, in her biography of Wood, noted: "His greatest service to his art and his country lies undoubtedly in the fact that he has liberated music from its exclusive sphere and offered it to the people."

The Proms are the ongoing legacy of Wood's remarkable life and work. It is the most democratic of all music festivals and one in which his vision of quality music making presented to the largest possible audience remains its driving force.

• Henry Wood Day is at the Albert Hall at 2:30pm on Sunday. It will be broadcast live on Radio 3 and shown on BBC4 at 7:30pm on 9 September. www.bbc.co.uk/proms