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‘My music is always the voice of nature.’ A hymn to the natural world, Gustav Mahler takes on the elements in a work like no other. Writing for huge forces, Mahler was so consumed by his Third Symphony that he was convinced that it had a life of its own. Indeed, it has all the energy of an offshore wind farm – but whilst this is music of the Earth, it is also music of the soul. Here, Mahler is on a spiritual quest, one of extreme emotional highs and lows. The earthshattering climax is a paean to love.

Sean Chandler presents a live and interactive performance of Three Billy Goats Gruff from the CBeebies series Musical Storyland with musicians from the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra.

Music for beginnings and endings. It’s hard to find a more famous, or iconically flamboyant first few seconds than the clarinet solo at the start of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. ‘Metropolitan madness’ and a ‘musical kaleidoscope of America’ is how Gershwin described this musical montage of the jazz age.

Musicians from Manchester’s ensembles assemble under the baton of Alpesh Chauhan for a spectacular concert of fanfares and flourishes to celebrate the finale of a spectacular weekend of music.

Quentin Blake’s Box of Treasures bursts open with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra as they play live accompaniment to two wonderfully animated adventures. Imagine the glorious, multicoloured world of Quentin Blake spring to life as 80 amazing musicians follow Jack, Nancy and Mrs Armitage every step of the way.

Hear the world premiere of Robert Laidlow’s new work TECHNO-UTOPIA, a genre defining piece for piano, orchestra and new AI live-processed instruments.

Night-time darkness and blazing musical sunlight collide in Mahler’s Symphony No. 7 – a musical epic that packs the whole world into five contrasting movements. Vast orchestral forces – including mandolin, cowbells and guitar – conjure a shifting landscape of waltzes, serenades, fanfares, marches and mysterious ‘night-wandering’ – by turns romantic and humorous, sardonic and sincere. To open, John Storgårds conducts the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and tenor Allan Clayton in the world premiere of award-winning composer Tom Coult’s Monologues for the Curious, inspired by the ghost stories of M. R. James.

A concert of larger-than-life sounds, stories and characters has Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique at its heart. Heady, opium-fuelled visions create a kaleidoscopic sequence: a swirling ballroom, a march to the scaffold and a witches’ sabbath, all set to the obsessive pulse of unrequited love. Sci-fi legend Philip K. Dick inspires Mark Simpson’s ZEBRA, a new concerto for maverick guitarist and former BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist Sean Shibe. The concert opens with Strauss’s Death and Transfiguration – no less than a musical struggle between life and death, climaxing in a promise of eternal peace.

The thrum of urban America – jazz clubs and bustling sidewalks, pulsing Latin rhythms and night-time lights – runs through this Prom given by Joshua Weilerstein and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. Rachmaninov’s enigmatic final masterpiece, the Symphonic Dances, blends Russian soul with bold colours from the composer’s adopted homeland. Copland’s Clarinet Concerto draws on the virtuoso skills of jazz legend Benny Goodman, while bandleader Artie Shaw wrote his Clarinet Concerto for his own considerable skills as a player. Elsa Barraine’s tautly lyrical Symphony No. 2 opens the programme.

In Shostakovich’s anniversary year, a chance to hear his blistering operatic tragedy with an ‘innocent murderess’ at its heart. Amanda Majeski stars as Katerina – the defiant Lady Macbeth – with tenor Nicky Spence as her lover Sergey and Brindley Sherratt as the brutal patriarch Boris.