Here’s the BBC Proms, it’s music to our ears!

From Glastonbury, which would have been celebrating its 50th birthday, to Wimbledon, so many great British institutions have sadly had to cancel this year.

So, it won’t just be classical music fans who feel like celebrating the fact that the Proms is still going ahead – it’s a bit of normality in a strange year.

Admittedly, it’s not quite how we know it. Since mid-July, Radio 3 and BBC4 have been bringing us classic performances rather than new concerts. Even now that the live shows are starting again, there won’t be an audience. But at least the festival of music is continuing.

David Pickard, Director of BBC Proms, says: “The 2020 Proms will be a season unlike any other in its 125-year history. Music can be a powerful friend in difficult times and Sir Henry Wood’s mission – to bring the best of classical music to the widest possible audience, ‘making its beneficent effect universal’ – is more important now than it has ever been.

“The riches to be found in the archive of the past four decades – including legendary concerts with some of the greatest names in classical music – bear witness to the international standing of the Proms, while two weeks of live performances in the Royal Albert Hall will celebrate the beating heart of music today.”

Among the artists due to take part over the next fortnight is acclaimed British singer-songwriter Laura Marling, who will be performing songs from her Mercury-nominated album Song for Our Daughter, as well as tracks from her previous albums with brand-new string arrangements by American multi-instrumentalist, arranger and producer Rob Moose.

Also in this year’s line-up, which is more subject to change than usual, are pianist Mitsuko Uchida with the London Symphony Orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle, violinists Nicola Benedetti and Alina Ibragimova with the Orchestra of the Age Of Enlightenment under Jonathan Cohen, and cello Sheku Kanneh-Mason and his pianist sister Isata Kanneh-Mason.

The music won’t just be coming from London. The BBC National Orchestra of Wales with Chief Conductor Ryan Bancroft, BBC Philharmonic with Chief Conductor Omer Meir Wellber and BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra with Chief Conductor Thomas Dausgaard will all join the Proms from their homes in Cardiff, Manchester and Glasgow, representing the cities in which they are based.

It will all culminate in the Last Night of the Proms, which will feature South-African soprano Golda Schultz with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under its Principal Guest Conductor Dalia Stasevska and could well be one of the most poignant in the event’s history. But we begin with Katie Derham introducing a feast of music including Beethoven’s Third Symphony, Aaron Copland’s Quiet City, and a new work by young British composer Hannah Kendall, all performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and BBC Singers with conductor Sakari Oramo.

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