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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.

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.

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.

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.

‘I want to show the world the richness and beauty of African culture ... and I feel music is the best vehicle to carry that message.’ That mission has sustained the career of five-time Grammy Award-winner Angélique Kidjo for over four decades. Following her Proms debut back in 2019, the Benin-born ‘queen of African music’ returns for a showcase as part of Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture, paying tribute to her African heritage and taking in iconic tracks from legends such as Miriam Makeba, Fela Kuti, Hugh Masekela and Youssou N’Dour. ‘I wanted to tell a story based on my personal experience and my musical background,’ says Kidjo. ‘I also wanted to speak of the struggles that artists encounter in the pursuit of their music.’