A Patribachy Guide to the BBC Proms

How do we know when summer is just around the corner? Perhaps it’s the early May Bank Holiday, or the changing of the clocks to British Summer Time. For us classical music nerds however, it’s the publication of the BBC Proms guide that heralds the coming season. Down with the Patribachy’s Ellie (in italics) and Ben (not in italics) have trawled through the programme, and each picked out a few Patribachy-tastic concerts they think need to be on your ‘must-see’ (or indeed ‘must-listen-on-BBC-Radio-3’) list for this year’s Festival.

Left to right: Randall Goosby, Samara Joy, Simon Rattle, Lisa Batiashvili, Dalia Stasevska, Anoushka Shankar, Joe Hisaishi / BBC

Before we dive in, here are a few Patribachilicious facts about the upcoming season:

• Errollyn Wallen’s ‘The Elements’, commissioned by the BBC, receives its world premiere at the First Night of the Proms

• 2025 sees the first female-fronted Last Night of the Proms in history, with appearances from conductor Elim Chan, trumpeter Alison Balsom, soprano Louise Alder, and world premieres by Camille Pépin and Rachel Portman

• Outside of its SW7 home at the Royal Albert Hall, the Proms reaches 14 venues across the UK

• Anna Lapwood co-curates the first overnight Prom since 1983

• Claudia Winkleman presents The Traitors Prom at the Royal Albert Hall

• Two different pairs of CBeebies Proms – two in Gateshead and two in London – for all those little music-lovers

• A whole world premiere album at a Prom with sitarist Anoushka Shankar

• Non-classical Proms include a soul Prom with Trevor Nelson and Great American Songbook Prom with 5-time GRAMMY award-winner Samara Joy

• 25 televised Proms, with NINE on BBC One or Two.

First Night of the Proms – Friday 18th July

This year’s First Night of the Proms (FNotP) perfectly sums up the season as a whole: those classics you know and love, paired with exciting new commissions and amazing music by those composers you don’t know so well. How apposite then that this concert features a world premiere from Master of the King’s Music Errollyn Wallen. ‘The Elements’ is placed in the second half alongside Vaughan Williams’ Sancta civitas, an oratorio based on text from the book of Revelation. The first half features Felix Mendelssohn’s ‘Fingal’s Cave’, crowned by Sibelius’ tormented, brilliant Violin Concerto with Lisa Batiashvili.

French Night with the Orchestre National de France – Wednesday 23rd July

The Proms is well-known for giving a (very big) platform to talented young performers, and this year, no fewer than 80 soloists will be giving their BBC Proms debut. In this fabulously French feast, violinist Randall Goosby will be performing Patribachy composer, Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges’s G major Violin Concerto. And, if that’s not enough to whet your appetite – I adore Randall but despise the Classical era – a UK premiere by one of the Proms’s host of commissions by women composers, Charlotte Sohy. This’ll be a good’un.

Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto – Wednesday 30th July

Now I know what you’re thinking, ‘Ellie, Rachmaninov is as stale, pale and male as they come!’ and you’re right. But whilst Rach isn’t exactly on-brand for Patribachy, Grażyna Bacewicz absolutely is, and her Concerto for String Orchestra – though short – is nothing short of fantastic. I came across it a few weeks ago during a mission to expand my shoddy knowledge of orchestral music and immediately added it to my playlist! The copy in the Proms webpage sums the piece up much better (and more succinctly) than I would: one of ‘two orchestral showpieces… Bacewicz’s vibrant Concerto for String Orchestra – whose motoric outer movements contrast with a sublime Andante…’ This 14-minute wonder will give you a little insight into the marvellous mind of Grażyna Bacewicz’s marvelous mind, and I hope we’ll hear more from her extraordinary catalogue in seasons to come.

Great British Classics – Tuesday 5th August

I seriously think this concert should be renamed ‘Down with the Patribachy: Live!’ given the sheer number of marginalised composers on offer in this fabulous smorgasbord of music featuring the very best of British. The choral motets of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and his daughter Avril feature in the first half amongst William Walton’s ‘Orb and Sceptre’ and Benjamin Britten’s ‘Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes’. ‘The Lee Shore’ is a particular highlight, with Thomas Hood’s seafaring poetry perfectly captured by SCT. Dramatic, crashing quavers depict the terrifying wind and thunder that batters the ‘toiling seamen’, and a gentle rocking motion and luscious chords characterise the calm of waves lapping at the shore.

In the second half, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales delve into their native roots with Grace Williams’ Elegy for Strings, a piece which manages to be equal parts ethereal, serene and somewhat unsettling, all at once. This is a masterclass in programming: a perfect prelude for the mournful, pensive opening of Elgar’s ‘Enigma’ Variations which conclude the concert.

The Cavemen. – Tuesday 12th August, Late Night Prom

Now, it’s worth noting that I am not a huge advocate for staying out late. I like my sofa far too much to be out on the town after 10pm. However, I may well make an exception for this hugely intriguing Prom. The Cavemen. are a Nigerian ‘highlife’ band, a ‘goodtime’ genre predating afrobeats that epitomised the West African nightlife scene in the 1960s. Think plucked, intricate guitars, dazzling horns and unceasing percussion, and sheer, boundless joy, and you’re on the right tracks. Oh, and it isn’t classical, but it’s certainly worth a watch.

Boléro and The Rite of Spring – Wednesday 13th August

Another commission here, this time from Icelandic superstar Anna Thorvaldsdottir. Receiving its world premiere in San Francisco in May, ‘Before we fall (Cello Concerto)’ it’s given its UK premiere here by Johannes Moser and the BBC Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Eva Ollikainen. Another fine example of programming on display here, with a groundbreaking new work falling into the traditional ‘overture/concerto/symphony-scale work’ format. In this case, we’re treated to Ravel’s Bolero and Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, which famously caused a stir at its first performance. Let’s hope that Thorvaldsdottir’s concerto does the same (hopefully without the rioting...).

Danish National Vocal Ensemble – Saturday 23rd August, St George’s Bristol

One of the great developments in the Proms programme in recent years has been to take the world’s greatest classical music festival out of London and into other amazing cities and venues. This afternoon concert would have been slightly lost in the Royal Albert Hall’s cavernous acoustic, but in the intimate setting of St George’s Bristol (a venue very familiar to both Ellie and me from our days at university), this stunning programme will surely come to life. The hook for this performance by the Danish National Vocal Ensemble is the music of the great Dane Carl Nielsen, but elsewhere they’ve cleverly programmed recognisable works by the old guard alongside complementary works by female composers.

The concert opens with Bach’s stunning motet ‘Komm, Jesu Komm’, with its intricate double choir call and response motifs. If this piece as a whole is the call, then Ethel Smyth’s ‘Komm, süsser Tod’ from her Five Sacred Partsongs serves as a perfect response. Victorian partsongs are a wonderful genre of music, seamlessly blending renaissance polyphony with more lucid and vivid Victorian harmonies. Smyth’s setting is mournful, reflective and spacious, with the numerous suspensions and chromatic tensions in the music unfolding gradually, filling the acoustic with an ever more beautiful sonic landscape.

To round off the concert, the Ensemble perform two lieder written by both Mahlers – Gustav and Alma – arranged here for full chorus, a fitting end to a concert that dares to merge the classics we know well with music by female composers that allows us to view the music we’re so familiar with in a new and exciting way.

Rattle conducts Chineke! – Friday 5th September

Yes, you read that right! Two worlds collide as classical music royalty, Sir Simon Rattle, conducts the UK’s first (and only) majority Black and ethnically diverse orchestra, Chineke!. The ticket-seller will, no doubt, be Shostakovich’s mighty Tenth Symphony, a work which outlines life in Stalin’s Russia, but the music that comprises the first half is a veritable platter of Patribachy gold. The concert opens with Coleridge-Taylor’s vibrant dance for orchestra, The Bamboula, a piece inspired by a traditional African drum and dance, originally brought to the Americas and the Caribbean by enslaved Africans. Then, George Walker’s Sinfonia No. 5, ‘Visions’. The first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize, Walker completed this piece at the ripe age of 94, outraged and deeply affected by the 2015 Charleston church massacre. It’s largely atonal, expressive, energetic and, understandably, filled with anger. This concert promises to touch any classical music enthusiast, and to show, through music, what it means to feel and to thrive in spite of oppression.

Avi Avital: Between Worlds – Tuesday 9th September

Ever been to a mandolin recital? Me neither, but I sure as heck will this summer. Mandolin virtuoso Avi Avital and his Between Worlds Ensemble fill the Royal Albert Hall with music of the Black Sea. A late-night, musical tour exploring the sonic culture of Eastern Europe and the Middle East, including works by extrordinary Turkish composer, Fazil Say, Crimean Tatar music and klezmer. This will be a real treat, and something utterly unique as the season enters its final week.

Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony – Wednesday 10th September

BBC Scottish. Anastasia Kobekina playing Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto. Rachmaninov’s Second. Lili Boulanger’s D’un matin de prinemps. Plenty said. I’ll fight you for tickets on this one…

Last Night of the Proms 2025 – Saturday 13th September

It feels almost sacrilegious to write anything about the Last Night of the Proms (LNotP) before tickets for the regular season have even gone on sale, but it would be remiss of me not to mention the fact that we have our first EVER female-fronted LNotP. Heck! Elim Chan returns to the podium to direct the BBC SO after a stellar FNotP, with a delicious programme including Mussorgsky’s evocative Night on the Bare Mountain (in its original, 1867 form) and Dukas’s beloved Sorcerer’s Apprentice, now synonymous with Disney’s 1940/2000 Fantasia. However, things get particularly spicy when you notice the pair of BBC commissions in this concert are by women composers, we look forward to hearing the world premieres of Camille Pépin’s Fireworks and The Gathering Tree by Rachel Portman. As well as this, Alison Balsom plays Hummel’s E flat Trumpet Concerto and soprano Louise Alder is certain to dazzle throughout the evening. In between the girlpower you’ll hear the usual selection of music from men usually found “in a wig and on a wall” (I have Errollyn Wallen to thank for that exquisite phrase), but we all enjoy a sing song of Auld Lang Syne and Jerusalem to bring the summer to a rousing close. The Last Night is an evening steeped in history and controversy, but it’s hideously exciting to have women front and centre in this, classical music’s biggest party.

There are plenty of other highlights, but hopefully this gives you a useful starting point. The Proms isn’t just the world's greatest classical music festival, it’s also the most accessible, with 1,000 tickets available for £8 in the Arena and Gallery for every concert at the Royal Albert Hall. There are also concerts in 14 venues across the UK, including spots in Bradford (City of Culture, 2025), Bristol, Gateshead, Sunderland and Belfast, so you’re bound to find a concert near you.

Which Proms will you be attending this year? Get in touch and let us know!