BBC Proms — Season 2017

BBC Proms 2017 kicks off in style tonight at the Royal Albert Hall. Beethoven's dramatic Third Piano Concerto is performed by star soloist Igor Levit with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and conductor Edward Gardner. This opening concert of the world's biggest music festival also includes a raucous new work by Tom Coult, St John's Dance, the first of 13 world premieres at Proms 2017. Presented by Katie Derham.

Inspirational maestro Daniel Barenboim makes his second appearance in this opening weekend of the 2017 Proms season. Conducting his German orchestra Staatskappelle Berlin, Barenboim brings an entirely English programme to the Royal Albert Hall, including Elgar's poignant Second Symphony and the UK premiere of Sir Harrison Birtwistle's Deep Time, a work dedicated to the memory of Birtwistle's friend and colleague Sir Peter Maxwell Davies.

The BBC Proms celebrates the 85th birthday of the world's favourite film composer, John Williams. The BBC Concert Orchestra and conductor Keith Lockhart perform some of the best-loved music in cinema history, including movie magic from Star Wars, Harry Potter, ET and Indiana Jones as well as lesser-known gems from John Williams's extraordinary back catalogue. Presented by Katie Derham.

BBC Proms legend Bernard Haitink returns to The Royal Albert Hall to conduct his beloved Chamber Orchestra of Europe. Acclaimed German violinist Isabelle Faust plays Mozart's joyous Third Violin Concerto, paired tonight with Mozart's ground-breaking Symphony No. 38 (Prague). Schumann's Second Symphony closes the programme.

Sir Malcolm Sargent was the chief conductor of the Proms for two decades, bringing the concerts to TV audiences for the first time. To mark the 50th anniversary of his death, Andrew Davies conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra and young pianist Beatrice Rana to recreate Sargent's 500th Prom from 1966. Alongside Schumann and Berlioz, there is a feast of English music by composers including Elgar and Holst, with the evening culminating in Britten's much-loved The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra.

Jarvis Cocker leads an eclectic line-up in this Late Night tribute to the 60s cult icon Scott Walker. Conductor Jules Buckley has arranged tracks from Walker's four eponymous albums, which are here performed with live orchestral backing for the first time. Featuring Jules Buckley's Heritage Orchestra and London Contemporary Voices. Special guests include John Grant, Susanne Sundfør and Richard Hawley.

Beethoven's much-loved Ninth Symphony, with its passionate plea for unity, is performed by the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales and the CBSO Chorus, conducted by Xian Zhang. Its companion piece is the European premiere of A European Requiem, written in 2015 by the great Scottish composer Sir James MacMillan. series 2017.

A stirring story of justice and liberty, Beethoven's only opera Fidelio is performed by a stellar cast, including Stuart Skelton, Ricarda Merbeth, James Creswell and Louise Alder. The BBC Philharmonic is joined by Spanish choir Orfeon Donostiarra under conductor Juanjo Mena. series 2017.

A special Proms tribute to jazz greats Ella Fitzgerald and Dizzy Gillespie, in the centenary year of their births. Grammy Award-winning singer Dianne Reeves and sensational trumpeter James Morrison perform with the BBC Concert Orchestra under the baton of Hollywood music legend John Mauceri, as they showcase some of the music most closely associated with Ella and Dizzy. series 2017.

The National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain returns to the BBC Proms under the baton of renowned composer and conductor Thomas Ades. The formidable young musicians perform Stravinsky's thrilling ballet score The Rite of Spring, the London premiere of Mural by Francisco Coll and Ades's own work Polaris.

Cowboys and farm girls are let loose in the Royal Albert Hall as the John Wilson Orchestra transports us to the Great American Plains in Oklahoma! Rodgers and Hammerstein's first ever musical was an instant hit when it premiered on Broadway in 1943 and it's not hard to see why - it's chock full of toe-tapping classics, including Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin', People Will Say We're in Love, and of course the title song itself. With a stellar cast, sensational dance numbers and the unique energy of the John Wilson Orchestra, the magic of the original lives on in 2017.

The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra perform two of Rachmaninov's greatest and best-loved works in a programme dedicated entirely to the composer.Award-winning pianist Alexander Gavrylyuk makes his Proms debut in the Rachmaninov's famously demanding Third Piano Concerto, which is followed by the capricious and impassioned Second Symphony.

The Aurora Orchestra perform Beethoven's Eroica Symphony.The fearlessly brilliant members of the Aurora Orchestra perform Beethoven's revolutionary Eroica Symphony entirely from memory, conducted by Nicholas Collon.

Two goliaths of 20th century music, Ravi Shankar and Philip Glass, recorded the studio album Passages together in 1989. The result was a unique fusion of Hindustani sitar music with American minimalism. Tonight the full album is performed live for the first time, with Shankar's daughter Anoushka Shankar playing the sitar alongside the Britten Sinfonia, conducted by Karen Kamensek.

In one of a series of Proms performances marking the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, John Butt directs his Dunedin Consort in a complete performance of Bach's powerful St John Passion, with Nicolas Mulroy as the Evangelist and Matthew Brook as Jesus. Reflecting the church setting for which it was written, the performance includes congregational singing from the Proms audience.

A giant in 20th-century jazz, the legendary composer, bandleader and bass player Charles Mingus is celebrated by conductor Jules Buckley and his Metropole Orkest. Plus a brilliant line-up of soloists, including saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings, trumpeter Christian Scott and singer Kandace Springs, are on the bill.

Following her dazzling debut at the Proms last year, conductor Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla returns to the Royal Albert Hall with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Their programme includes Beethoven's mighty Fifth Symphony, Stravinsky's Violin Concerto with soloist Leila Josefowicz, and the world premiere of Gerald Barry's Canada with soloist Allan Clayton.

Singer and broadcaster Clare Teal heads the charge in this big band spectacular. Travel back in time with this rip-roaring Prom to the 1930s and 1940s and celebrate the irrepressible music of Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Tommy Dorsey, Stan Kenton and more, plus a special tribute to the unassuming giant of the big band world, Mary Lou Williams. Band leaders Guy Barker and Winston Rollins take to the stage alongside their eponymous big bands with help from a myriad of guest artists.

Founded in 1957, Memphis-based Stax Records was synonymous with Southern soul - a distinctive blend of funk, gospel and R&B that brought listeners across America together at a time of racial conflict and political unrest. In this Late Night Prom, Jools Holland and his Rhythm and Blues Orchestra pay tribute to the pioneering label and celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Stax/Volt Revue's first tour of the UK, in a concert featuring some of the label's greatest surviving artists. Stax legends Booker T Jones and Sam Moore appear alongside Sir Tom Jones, a long-time fan and interpreter of the Stax songbook. Both Jones and Moore were part of the 1967 tour and join fellow Stax artists William Bell, Steve Cropper and Eddie Floyd in this unique coming-together. They are joined by more fans of the Stax sound in Beverley Knight, James Morrison, Nadia Rose and Sweetie Irie and Ruby Turner.

In one of the highlights of this year's Proms season, Sir Simon Rattle brings Schoenberg's colossal Gurrelieder to the Royal Albert Hall, uniting the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, CBSO Chorus, Orfeo Catala and a stunning line-up of soloists including Eva-Maria Westbroek, Simon O'Neill and speaker Thomas Quasthoff. An epic love story conceived on a Wagnerian scale, it reaches its climax with a truly unforgettable depiction of sunrise.

To mark the 70th anniversary of independence from British rule and the subsequent Partition of India from Pakistan and Bangladesh, this special late-night Prom celebrates the power of music to heal and unify. Curated by the cultural heritage trust Darbar, it brings together virtuoso soloists and world-leading groups representing the three great traditions of classical music from India and Pakistan. From late evening into the night, the concert takes us from the Hindustani music of north India to the Carnatic music of the south, and leads to an ecstatic climax with devotional Sufi qawwali from Pakistan.

After his extraordinary performance of Bach's Goldberg Variations at the 2015 Proms, world-renowned pianist Sir Andras Schiff returns to the Royal Albert Hall for another solo Bach recital. He performs Book One of Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier, a cycle that he will complete next year with Book Two. Almost three centuries after Bach composed his two sequences of preludes and fugues in all 24 keys, 'the 48' remains a touchstone for all great pianists.

Bartok's sparkling Second Piano Concerto and Dvorak's Eighth Symphony are in the spotlight as American pianist Jeremy Denk joins conductor Karina Canellakis and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. The concert opens with Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres) by young American composer Missy Mazzoli, music 'in the shape of the solar system'.

Europe's first majority BME orchestra comes to the Proms for the first time. Chineke! was founded two years ago by double bassist Chi-chi Nwanoku, and is joined tonight by the brilliant young cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, soprano Jeanine De Bique and conductor Kevin John Edusei. Their captivating programme features music by legendary American composer George Walker and a world premiere by Hannah Kendall, alongside works by Dvorak, Handel and Rimsky-Korsakov.

The BBC Proms 2017 season comes to a close with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and their Finnish chief conductor Sakari Oramo leading proceedings live from London's Royal Albert Hall. Soprano superstar Nina Stemme performs music from Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, the BBC Symphony Chorus and BBC Singers mark 100 years of Finnish independence with a performance of Sibelius's glorious Finlandia and Kodaly's Budavari Te Deum is performed by soprano Lucy Crowe, mezzo Christine Rice, tenor Ben Johnson and bass John Relyea. Also on the programme is the world premiere of Finnish composer Lotta Wennakoski's Flounce, as well as a performance of Malcolm Sargent's An Impression on a Windy Day. Presented by Katie Derham. series 2017.

The Last Night of the Proms celebrations continue live from the Royal Albert Hall in London. John Adams's seventieth birthday is marked with the London premiere of his exhilarating Lola Montez Does the Spider Dance, and solo star soprano Nina Stemme performs Weill's Surabaya Johnny and The Saga of Jenny, followed by Gershwin's The Lorelei. The programme takes a trip around the UK with Henry Wood's Fantasia on British Sea Songs, with contributions from the Proms in the Park events in Swansea, Glasgow and Belfast, before the BBC Proms 2017 is brought to a rousing close with Rule Britannia, Land of Hope and Glory and Jerusalem. The BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and BBC Singers are conducted by Sakari Oramo. Presented by Katie Derham. series 2017.

The traditional Last Night, Proms in the Park celebrations from venues around the UK. Gethin Jones and YolanDa Brown present a stellar mix of classical and contemporary performances, including internationally acclaimed percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie and legend of the flute Sir James Galway in Castle Coole, Enniskillen; rising star saxophonist Jess Gillam and soul diva Mica Paris from Swansea's Singleton Park; big band aficionado Clare Teal and Jason Manford in Glasgow Green; while opera superstar Sir Bryn Terfel and the sensational sounds of sixties icon Ray Davies draw the crowds to London's Hyde Park. All accompanied of course, by the BBC's acclaimed orchestras.