The Proms 2021: your guide to concert dates, BBC times and how to book tickets

Hallelujah – the 127th season of the Proms, long rumoured and much hoped for, is actually happening. Given the present weird circumstances, in which the Proms along with every other festival had to be planned amidst ever-shifting goalposts regarding social distancing and travel restrictions – not to mention the problems for visiting artists brought on by Brexit – it’s a very impressive rabbit that Proms director David Pickard has pulled out of the hat. And unlike last year’s season, which was entirely online (much to music-lovers dismay, who pointed to the proper in-person concerts happening elsewhere in the country) this one offers concerts for real, live audiences.

Admittedly circumstances have constrained the season somewhat. It’s short, with only 52 concerts across a six-week season, instead of more than 75 across eight. Furthermore, there are only two venues – the Royal Albert Hall and Cadogan Hall. There are no foreign-based artists, with a few exceptions like conductors Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla and Semyon Bychkov (fingers crossed they can make it) and no international orchestras (although there is a chamber orchestra – the Mahler, who will be performing a new work by George Benjamin).

With this in mind, it seemed inevitable that Pickard would assert this year’s Proms as a celebration of Britishness (a corrective, perhaps, to last year’s controversy surrounding the singing of Rule Britannia). Most of our major orchestras are present and correct, as are some of our finest soloists, including cellist Steven Isserlis, violinist Nicola Benedetti and the incredible Kanneh-Masons.

In many ways, though, it feels very much like a normal festival, with the usual mix of interesting discoveries from the archives alongside copper-bottomed masterpieces like Beethoven’s Eroica, Mozart’s last three symphonies and Bach’s St Matthew Passion. There are celebrations of anniversaries of composers: I counted 10, including Thomas Adès’s 50th birthday and 50 and 500 years since the deaths of Igor Stravinsky and Josquin; and an impressive tally of 17 new pieces, including 12 BBC commissions.

Given the uncertainty of live performance, it feels like Pickard and his team have pulled off a near miracle. So music lovers should rejoice, for now, and follow our guide to the best. All performances are at the Albert Hall unless stated otherwise.

July 30

First Night, BBC Symphony Orchestra & Singers, 7.30pm

What better way to launch a festival happening against the odds than Vaughan Williams’s seraphically beautiful Serenade to Music? Alongside it will be a new piece by James MacMillan, Poulenc’s Organ Concerto, and other pieces yet to be decided. On the podium will be Dalia Stasevska, who got into hot water last year when she suggested a pandemic was just the moment to revolutionise the Last Night. But the Proms audiences are a forgiving bunch, and will surely give her a warm welcome.

August 3

BBC Philharmonic, 7.30pm

The hotshot conductor Omer Meir Wellber conducts an eclectic evening which includes Schubert’s deliciously playful second Symphony, Beethoven’s sublime Symphony No. 4 and a new work by Ella Milch-Sheriff, The Eternal Stranger, dedicated to the Israeli-born Wellber.

August 5

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, 7.30pm

Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, the dancing firecracker of a conductor who leads the CBSO, has made it her mission to revive little-known 20th-century composers. In this Prom she’s lighted on the 2nd symphony of Ruth Gipps, an astonishingly gifted musician whom turned her back on modernism at a time when that was career death. Alongside it is the Symphony Thomas Adès fashioned from his wildly inventive, surreal opera The Exterminating Angel.

August 9

Marian Consort, Cadogan Hall, 1.00pm

This year is the 500th anniversary of the first indubitably great composer in classical music, Josquin des Prez. Rather than booking one of the UK’s well-known choirs such as the Tallis Scholars, the Proms is taking a punt on the terrific young Marian Consort. As well as three masterpieces by Josquin, they perform music by his contemporaries as well as the earliest piece to be published by a black composer, Vicente Lusitano’s Inviolata, integra et casta es.

August 16

To Soothe the Aching Heart, BBC Philharmonic, 7.30pm

Some of our greatest opera stars including Natalya Romaniw and Christine Rice perform from a series of well-known operas (Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel, Puccini’s La boheme, Handel’s Rodelinda) which cover the themes of isolation, loneliness and reunion. Expect a particularly poignant evening, with Ben Glassberg conducting.

August 17

Manchester Collective, 7.30pm

Trust the most stylistically adventurous harpsichordist on the planet Mahan Esfahani and the brilliant young Manchester Collective to offer something original, a delightful mix of the nostalgic, the mystical and the playful. The Vision of Joan of Arc by tragically short-lived black American composer Julius Eastman runs shoulders with Joseph Horowitz’s Jazz Concerto, Górecki’s Harpsichord Concerto, Dobrinka Tabakova’s Suite in Old Style and much else besides.

August 22

London Symphony Orchestra, 7.30pm

Sir Simon Rattle is the best living conductor of the rhythmically vital, witty music of Igor Stravinsky, so it was natural he should take on the Proms’ most substantial tribute to the composer in his 50th anniversary year. He’ll be leading performances of Stravinsky’s three very different mature symphonies: the ritualistic Symphony of Wind Instruments, the light, Beethovenian Symphony in C, and the darkly urgent “war” Symphony in Three Movements.

August 28

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, 7.30pm

The tousle-haired Moldovan “wild child” of the violin Patricia Kopatchinskaja joins the BBC SSO and its chief conductor Thomas Dausgaard to perform Bartók’s late, radiant Violin Concerto. That’s all we know for sure. The rest of this programme entitled Bartók Roots is anyone’s guess, but given Kopatchinskaja’s fondness for improvising, and her own roots as a Moldovan folk fiddler, it’s sure to be exciting.

August 29

Family Prom, 7.00pm

The Family Prom usually has a mix of contemporary pieces among the classic ones to sweeten the pill, but this year’s has just one work, the most old-fashioned and best-loved children’s classic of them all: Saint-Saëns Carnival of the Animals. It’s performed by all seven members of the Kanneh-Mason family, bolstered by seven equally fresh-faced musician friends and narrator Michael Morpurgo (who also provides several new poems to accompany this hardy perennial).

August 31

Wagner, Tristan and Isolde, 4.00pm

Soon to be seen at this year’s Glyndebourne Festival, this concert performance of Wagner’s great music-drama, which the composer very aptly described as “the simplest and most full-blooded conception”, will surely bloom even more splendidly in the vast space of the Royal Albert Hall. It boasts a strong cast, including Simon O’Neill as Tristan, Miina-Liisa Värelä as Isolde and Karen Cargill as Brangäne, and the wonderful Robin Ticciati on the podium.

September 2

20th-Century British Film Music, 7.30pm

During the Fifties and Sixties, Malcolm Arnold was THE face of the Proms, bringing elegance and eloquence to the Royal Albert Hall. 100 years after his birth, Arnold is one of the composers being celebrated in this evening dedicated to the golden age of the British cinema score, that time in the mid 20th century when we really rivalled America. There will also be works by Vaughan Williams and by the less well-known Doreen Carwithen whose scores include one for the official film of Elizabeth II, Elizabeth is Queen.

September 4

Sinfonia of London, 7.30pm

The Proms appearances by that slender matinée-idolish conductor John Wilson directing his own eponymous orchestra have become a Proms tradition in their own right. This year he offers something different: a programme of copper-bottomed classical works, performed by his “other” orchestra the Sinfonia of London, which embody four different visions of musical Vienna. There’s Johann Strauss’s fizzing Fledermaus Overture, Berg’s decadently romantic Four Early Songs, Ravel’s delirious La Valse, and Korngold’s deliciously nostalgic Symphony in F sharp major.

September 9

St Matthew Passion, Arcangelo Chorus, 7pm

Bach’s masterpiece is given the full works as Jonathan Cohen conducts the period-instrument ensemble Arcand and a heavyweight quartet of soloists including Roderick Williams and Gerald Finley. In this year of years, this work which combines grief with extraordinary consolation feels more necessary than ever.

September 11

Last Night, BBC Symphony Orchestra/BBC Singers, 7.30pm

There’s much about the Last Night we don’t yet know, such as who the composer of the new work will be. What we do know is that the stentorian-voiced tenor Stuart Skelton will be on the platform alongside the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s chief conductor Sakari Oramo, and that all the old favourites that were so controversial last year in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests – such as Rule Britannia and Jerusalem – are firmly back in place.

How to book tickets

For concerts taking place between July 30 and August 20, booking opens at 9am on Saturday 26 June.

For concerts taking place between August 21 and September 10, booking opens at 9am on Saturday 17 July.

For the Last Night, the majority of tickets are allocated via ballots.

Remaining tickets go on sale at 9am on Friday 13 August.

Booking: 020 7070 4441; bbc.co.uk/promstickets