2018 2018

An all-British concert launches the 2018 season. Vaughan Williams atmospheric Whitman settings and Holst’s ever-popular 1918 suite The Planets sit alongside a new collaboration by Anna Meredith and 59 Productions.

BBC Young Musician celebrates its 40th birthday with a concert featuring illustrious past winners and finalists, including Nicola Benedetti, Freddy Kempf and Sheku Kanneh-Mason, as well as this year’s winner. With music by Ravel and Saint-Saëns.

23-year-old vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and arranger Jacob Collier is already a multi-Grammy Award-winner. Here he teams up with Jules Buckley, the Metropole Orkest and special guests Sam Amidon and Take 6 for a special Proms performance.

Mendelssohn’s precocious First Piano Concerto joins Schumann’s forward-looking Fourth Symphony and music by Lili Boulanger and Morfydd Owen – both of whom died tragically young – in the BBC National Orchestra of Wales’s first Prom of the season.

Karina Canellakis directs the BBC Symphony Orchestra in two Russian classics: Rachmaninov’s exhilarating Symphonic Dances and Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto, with Alisa Weilerstein as soloist. Beethoven’s spirited overture Coriolan opens the concert.

The London Contemporary Orchestra leads a late-night tribute to the legacy of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop – pioneers of experimental electronic music – which includes Daphne Oram’s groundbreaking Still Point and music by RW stalwart Delia Derbyshire.

A concert of darkness and light opens with the world premiere of Tansy Davies’s 9/11-inspired What Did We See? and closes with Brahms’s sunny Second Symphony. Paul Lewis joins Ben Gernon and the BBC Philharmonic for Beethoven’s 'Emperor' Concerto.

Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending and Pastoral Symphony sit alongside music by Holst and Parry’s stirring Fifth Symphony in this centenary celebration of Hubert Parry – father of 20th-century English music. Martyn Brabbins conducts the BBC NOW.

Leading reggae and dancehall producer Mister Savona brings together some of Cuba and Jamaica’s most influential musicians for a concert combing the sounds of roots reggae, dub and dancehall with son, salsa and Afro-Cuban to create a new musical fusion.

The BBC Concert Orchestra collaborates with some of the folk world’s leading musicians, including Julie Fowlis, The Unthanks and Sam Lee, in a concert that celebrates traditional music while also looking to the future of this ever-evolving genre.

George Benjamin and the National Youth Orchestra in a concert of orchestral masterworks that includes Debussy’s La Mer and Ligeti’s mesmerising Lontano. Pianist Tamara Stefanovich is the soloist in Ravel’s Concerto for the Left Hand.

Richard Farnes conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra and soloists Golda Schultz and Johan Reuter in Brahms’s much-loved Requiem. Marking Thea Musgrave’s 90th birthday, the performance opens with her dramatic Phoenix Rising.

Celebrating the music of a modern New York, the Heritage Orchestra and conductor Jules Buckley present the sound of NYC. With guest artists drawn from across the Big Apple, expect anything from pagan-gospel and disco-punk to feminist rap or DIY indie.

The conflict of war runs through this concert by Edward Gardner and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Vaughan Williams’s beautiful cantata Dona nobis pacem and Lili Boulanger frame Elgar’s elegiac Cello Concerto.

Ravel’s magical opera The Child and the Spells follows his fairy-tale ballet Mother Goose and the oriental aura of Shéhérazade.

Recreating a Prom conducted by Leonard Bernstein in 1987, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Thomas Dausgaard pair two of the best-loved and most beautiful works in the repertoire: Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto and Mahler’s Fifth Symphony.

Dance to the Gypsy rhythms of Hungarian folk music in works by Liszt and Sarasate, while Brahms’s dramatic First Symphony, with its transcendent finale, is at the heart of this second concert by Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra.

Launching a Bernstein bank-holiday weekend on what would have been the composer’s 100th birthday, John Wilson conducts Bernstein’s hit Broadway musical On The Town, which follows the adventures of three sailors on shore leave in 1944.

Bernstein-protégée Marin Alsop returns to the Proms with one of the great American symphony orchestras to perform a politically charged programme that includes Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony alongside Bernstein’s own Second Symphony.

Following his performance of Book 1 in 2017, distinguished pianist and Bach specialist Sir András Schiff returns to present the complete Book 2 of J. S. Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier.

Senegalese cultural icon Youssou Ndour makes his Proms debut in a special late-night appearance. He’s joined by his group Le Super Étoile de Dakar for a performance embracing his signature mix of Cuban rumba, hip hop, jazz and soul.

Explore the raw sensuality and charged rhythms of the tango in all its guises. The Britten Sinfonia join forces with a tango band to take the dance from its dusty beginning in the streets of Buenos Aires right up to the present day.

The BBC Proms 2018 season comes to a close with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and their much-loved former chief conductor and Last Night of the Proms veteran Sir Andrew Davis steering proceedings live from the Royal Albert Hall. Long-standing nautical traditions of the evening are extended in Stanford's Songs of the Sea, featuring Canadian baritone Gerald Finley. The centenary of the end of the Great War is marked with a new work from Roxanna Panufnik, which also rounds off the season's original premieres and features BBC Singers and BBC Symphony Chorus.

The evening includes music by Hindemith, Berlioz and Charles Hubert Parry, who is celebrated 100 years after his death with a performance of Blest Pair of Sirens. Coverage also includes visits to Proms in the Parks across the Nation, also celebrating this annual great night in classical music.

Katie Derham presents live coverage as the Last Night of the Proms continues from the Royal Albert Hall with the ever-popular Marche militaire francaise by Saint-Saens. Award-winning 18-year-old saxophonist Jess Gillam performs Scaramouche by Milhaud, and baritone Gerry Finley performs the song Soliloquy from Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel.

To mark 100 years since 1918 there is a nationwide sing-around of traditional First World War songs, with contributions from the Proms in the Park events in Colwyn Bay, Glasgow and Belfast.

The 2018 Proms are brought to a familiar and much-loved rousing close with Rule Britannia, Land of Hope and Glory, and Jerusalem. The BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and BBC Singers are conducted by Sir Andrew Davis.

Jamie MacDougall presents coverage of part one of Scotland's Proms in the Park live from Glasgow Green. Featuring the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by Stephen Bell, the show features music from a range of styles and a host of guest performers including Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year Hannah Rarity, soprano Elizabeth Watts, Scottish-Egyptian duet The Ayoub Sisters and, marking their 10th anniversary, a group of young performers from Sistema Scotland.

Josie d'Arby and Tim Rhys-Evans present the first half of BBC Proms in the Park live from Colwyn Bay. They are joined by Welsh mezzo soprano Katherine Jenkins, West End star and actor Lee Mead, BBC Young Musician 2018 Lauren Zhang and Only Kids Aloud, performing popular classical, musical theatre and film favourites. They perform with the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales, conducted by Grant Llewellyn.

The BBC Proms in the Park returns to north Wales and Colwyn Bay for an evening of popular, classical, musical theatre and film favourites, plus all the traditional 'Last Night' celebrations. Josie d'Arby and Tim Rhys-Evans present highlights of this special concert featuring the Welsh mezzo soprano Katherine Jenkins, West End star and actor Lee Mead, BBC Young Musician 2018 Lauren Zhang and Only Kids Aloud - all performing with the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales.

The traditional Last Night of the Proms is celebrated in style with concerts from parks around the UK. Sean Fletcher and YolanDa Brown present a stunning mix of classical and contemporary performances.

Artists include one of Britain's leading sopranos Elizabeth Watts and pop diva Sophie Ellis-Bextor in Glasgow Green. World-famous classical singer Katherine Jenkins and show-stopping West End star Lee Mead perform at Eirias Park in Colwyn Bay alongside 2018 BBC Young Musician of the Year, pianist Lauren Zhang. Internationally acclaimed Israeli mandolinist Avi Avital and Midge Ure entertain in Titanic Slipways, Belfast, while rising star saxophonist and former Young Musician finalist Jess Gillam, and the sensational voice of soul Gladys Knight, draw the crowds to London's Hyde Park. They all come together for the traditional Last Night celebrations - accompanied by the BBC's orchestras.

This year's extravaganza from Titanic Slipways, Belfast, features a stellar line-up including Midge Ure, Kim Criswell, Xuefei Yang, Avi Avital and Itamar Doari, Karl McGuckin, the Ulster Youth Choir and the Ulster Orchestra under the baton of David Brophy.

Jamie MacDougall presents highlights of Scotland's Proms in the Park on Glasgow Green. Featuring the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by Stephen Bell, the show features music from a range of styles and a host of guest performers including Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year Hannah Rarity, soprano Elizabeth Watts and Scottish-Egyptian duet The Ayoub Sisters.