BBC Radio 3 - BBC Proms - A Beginner’s Guide to the BBC Proms 2024 Season (2024)

You’ve heard murmurs about the BBC Proms on the radio, you’ve seen pink posters plastered around the Underground and captivating clips on social media, but what exactly is it?

If you’re a music-lover or a culture vulture then you’ll find something you love in the 70+ concerts at South Kensington’s Royal Albert Hall, or the 17 performances at venues across the UK, including jam-packed weekends in Gateshead, Bristol and Nottingham.

So, as the ‘world’s greatest classical music festival’ kicks off, we’re diving in with an almighty splash and giving you a quick guide to some of the very best bits you can catch across this scorching summer of music.

Whether or not you know your Bach from your Beethoven or your Robert Schumann from your Clara Schumann, we guarantee you’ll love this season’s offering of classical music.

Kicking off the season in style, pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason (the eldest of the seven Kanneh-Mason siblings) performs Clara Schumann’s Piano Concerto at the First Night of the Proms under the trusty baton of Elim Chan. In this same concert, you can hear one of the most famous classical music themes of all time in Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Dun-dun-dun DUN? You’ll know it when you hear it.

Throughout the rest of the season, you can catch Verdi’s almighty Requiem with the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales, John Wilson conducting Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue – the ultimate fusion of jazz and classical – in its centenary year and Holst’s beloved symphonic suite The Planets makes its annual outing with the combined orchestras of London’s Royal College of Music and Helsinki’s Sibelius Academy. Sir Simon Rattle returns to the podium for two concerts with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Chineke! performs Tchaikovsky’s ‘Pathétique’ Symphony and, as ever at the BBC Proms, there’ll be lashings of Beethoven, Bruckner and Brahms.

Music speaks to all, regardless of generation, which is why we’ve got plenty of family-friendly concerts to keep your little ones busy this summer.

Join your favourite CBeebies friends for Duggee’s Wildlife Jamboree, a feast of music for the great outdoors with the BBC Singers, the Sinfonia Smith Square and the CBeebies East London Schools’ Choir. Two world-class vocal ensembles, The King’s Singers and VOCES8, are joining forces for a concert that mingles pop and film classics with classical, and later in the season you can hear Dukas’s beloved musical retelling of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

You can also join us for Prom 22: a Relaxed Prom designed to suit individuals or groups who feel more comfortable attending concerts in a relaxed environment. There’ll be chill-out areas and a relaxed attitude to noise, and with Sheku and Braimah Kanneh-Mason, Plínio Fernandes and the Fantasia Orchestra taking to the stage, it’ll be a morning to remember. Finally, Monday 26 August sees the TARDIS make its much-anticipated return to the Royal Albert Hall for a Doctor Who celebration like no other.

Oh, and did we mention concert-goers aged 18 and under get half-price tickets?

As well as bringing you the very best of British orchestras, with 31 performances from our very own BBC Orchestras and Choirs, the Proms is always a vibrant hub for global music-making.

This season we’ve invited an array of international ensembles to perform, from a Baroque-meets-hip hop interpretation of Purcell’s The Fairy Queen with Les Arts Florissants and the dancer of Comapagnie Käftig to a French feast with Orchestre de Paris conducted by the ever-rising star Klaus Mäkelä. You can also hear Janáček with the Czech Philharmonic, Bruckner with the Berliner Philharmoniker and Mozart with Ensemble Resonanz.

Last but by no means least, nobody does Baroque quite like Bach Collegium Japan, so their performance of Bach’s St John Passion another one not to miss.

Everybody dance! Kicking off this year’s star-studded non-classical line-up Studio 54-style, Prom 2 presents all the glitz and glamour of disco with the BBC Concert Orchestra. We challenge you not to tap your feet … Speaking of glamour, for a concert in which dark gothic meets all that glistens, Florence Welch makes her BBC Proms debut with Jules Buckley and his Orchestra.

Ten years on from the release of In the Lonely Hour, Sam Smith also makes their Proms debut with an orchestral reimagining of their autobiographical album (and more) with the BBC Concert Orchestra.

And Proms 8 and Prom 13 see the spotlight shine on two iconic musicians from years past: British folk singer-songwriter Nick Drake and American jazz artist Sarah Vaughan. On jazz, you can catch Caravan, Solitude and other Ellington classics alongside the UK premiere of Mary Lou Williams’s 1945 Zodiac Suite with the Aaron Diehl Trio and BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.

Hallelujah! Singing is front and centre at the Proms this season, as a star-studded roster of performers lifts the roof off the Royal Albert Hall. We celebrate the centenary of the BBC’s professional chamber choir, the BBC Singers, and showcase some of the UK's great choral ensembles such as The King's Singers and VOCES8. Glyndebourne Festival Opera performs that most red-blooded of operas, Bizet's Carmen, and Garsington Opera makes its Proms debut with a semi-staged production of Britten’s  A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

To cap it off, we host a Proms Choral Day at the end of the season that includes a performance of Handel's Messiah and the UK debut of dynamic American ensemble the Jason Max Ferdinand Singers.

If you’re a night owl then our intimate Late Night Proms might just be for you.

Multi-skilled, golden-voiced counter-tenor Jakub Józef Orliński joins period-instrument group Il Pomo d’Oro for a journey through the music of the early Baroque, while Tinariwen makes a visit all the way from northern Mali to combine traditional Tuareg and African music with elements of Western rock and jazz. Eric Whitacre joins the BBC Singers for Eternity in an Hour, a brand-new 60-minute work guaranteed to send you off into the night in a state of utter tranquility. The London Sinfonietta and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment join together to perform Heiner Goebbels’s Songs of Wars I Have Seen, a landmark setting of wartime diary entries by Gertrude Stein, and Sir András Schiff brings Bach’s The Art of Fugue to life on a fine modern piano.

You’re in for some unforgettable evenings this summer.

We’ve got notes in every nation across the UK this summer! Alongside concerts in London, Aberdeen, Belfast and Newport, we’re thrilled to be returning to Gateshead for another weekend-long Proms festival this season, and delighted that a full weekend of Proms will also be hosted at the Bristol Beacon, and in Nottingham, at both the Albert Hall and Royal Concert Hall.

Tickets for BBC Proms 2024 are on sale now. Explore the full season here.

No Prom is ever truly sold out until the day of the concert. For each Prom at the Royal Albert Hall there are around 1,000 tickets for standing places in the Arena and Gallery for just £8. Book up to two tickets online from 10.30am on the day of the concert, and find full details about Promming here.

Every Prom will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and BBC Sounds and many will also be broadcast on BBC TV and iPlayer.