The overall approach may not change much from year to year, but the anniversaries celebrated in this year’s Proms have generated a richer mix of musical styles and periods than in some recent seasons. There are works by William Byrd (15 July) and Thomas Weelkes (30 July) to satisfy the early-music enthusiasts, while those who love to indulge in the lusher end of romanticism will relish the number of pieces by Rachmaninov included to mark the 150th anniversary of his birth, though there’s no sign of any of the operas or even of all of the piano concertos. Followers of 20th-century music will welcome the healthy representation of pieces by Ligeti, including his celebrated Requiem, in his centenary year. Another 100th milestone, marking the Croatian composer Dora Pejačevič’s death, provides the opportunity to explore some of her little known output; and, if the new works and commissions are generally rather disappointing this time, with very few truly outstanding world premieres in prospect, then the rarities dotted throughout the programmes will be some compensation.
Prom 9: Mariza sings Fado (21 July)
An evening devoted to that particularly Portuguese form of song, the country’s yearning, despairing musical soul, with one of its leading exponents joined by fado instrumentalists and an ensemble of strings.
Prom 13: Portions Transparent/Opaque (24 July)
Ilan Volkov’s visits to the Proms with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra always include something new, and this time it’s the world premiere of a major work by the US-born, Berlin-based Catherine Lamb, a triptych inspired by colour theory.
Prom 26: Kafka’s Earplugs (3 August)
The title alone is almost enough to identify the composer as Gerald Barry, whose music may be infuriatingly simple, ferociously aggressive or giddily hilarious, but never dull. John Storgårds and the BBC Philharmonic give the premiere, alongside works by Walton and Sibelius.
Prom 43 Endgame (17 August)
First seen in Milan in 2018, György Kurtág’s long-awaited operatic version of Samuel Beckett’s play gets its UK premiere in a semi-staging conducted by Ryan Wigglesworth, with Frode Olsen as Hamm, Morgan Moody as Clov; Hilary Summers is Nell, and Leonardo Cortellazzi is Nagg.
Prom 44 Gemma New (18 August)
The New Zealand-born conductor, tipped as a name to watch, makes her Proms debut with the BBC Scottish orchestra in a programme of Shostakovich, Stravinsky, and the European premiere of Canadian composer Samy Moussa’s Symphony No 2.
Prom 47 Les Siècles (20 August)
François-Xavier Roth and his wonderful, shape-shifting orchestra bring together the 18th and 20th centuries, with Isabelle Faust the soloist in Ligeti’s Violin Concerto and Alexander Melnikov playing Mozart’s A major Piano Concerto K488.
Prom 49 Das Paradies und die Peri (22 August)
Simon Rattle is making his final UK appearances as the London Symphony Orchestra’s chief conductor at the Proms. In the first of them he conducts Schumann’s too rarely heard choral work, part opera, part oratorio; Lucy Crowe, Magdalena Kožená, Andrew Staples and Florian Boesch are among the soloists.
Proms 62 & 63: The Rite of Spring by Heart (2 September)
The Aurora Orchestra and their conductor Nicholas Collon take on their biggest challenge yet, giving two performances of Stravinsky’s revolutionary masterpiece conducted and played entirely from memory.
Prom 64: The Trojans (3 September)
Berlioz’s epic opera gets its first British performance in a decade, with John Eliot Gardiner conducting the period instruments of the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, and Alice Coote, Paula Murrihy and Michael Spyres leading the cast.
Prom 69: Pygmalion’s Mozart Requiem (7 September)
Raphaël Pichon and his group, Pygmalion, offer their solution to the challenge of making a satisfactory completion of Mozart’s famously unfinished work, adding further pieces by Mozart to Süssmayr’s completion and giving it all a plainsong framework.
• General booking opens at 9am on 13 May. More info at bbc.co.uk/proms. All concerts are broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and will be available for 12 months on BBC Sounds.
