The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor Ilan Volkov pair Beethoven’s dramatic concert aria ‘Ah! perfido’ with the Second Symphony – a work whose vitality and ‘smiling’ mood belie the private struggles and despair of a composer wrestling with hearing loss – with a new commission from celebrated American composer George Lewis. This world premiere blends a conventional orchestra with spatialised electronics, exploiting the unique space of the Royal Albert Hall to create, in Lewis’s words, ‘a medium for meditation on what processes of decolonisation might sound like’.

The Chineke! Orchestra returns for its fourth visit to the Proms, celebrating diversity in composers as well as performers. Black British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s overture to his popular cantata based on the tale of a Native American leader quotes the spiritual ‘Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen’. There are further meetings of African and European musical styles in Nigerian composer Fela Sowande’s African Suite and the piano concerto by Florence Price, the first female African-American composer to win renown in America. By contrast, Coleridge-Taylor’s Symphony, written as a 20-year old student of Stanford at London’s Royal College of Music, reveals the influence of his hero, Dvo?ák.

The London Symphony Orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle mark 2021’s Stravinsky anniversary with a series of symphonic snapshots. We follow Stravinsky’s view of the symphony from the experimental, colour-blocked ‘ritual’ of the Symphonies of Wind Instruments, through the transitional Symphony in C – reflecting both the composer’s European past and his American future – to arrive at the bold Symphony in Three Movements.

British saxophonist, composer, DJ and bandleader Nubya Garcia is one of the brightest of a new generation of jazz talent, drawing comparison with greats such as Sonny Rollins and Dexter Gordon. Named a ‘major voice’ by The New York Times, she has devised a brand of ‘eclectic, danceable, political jazz’ that draws on influences from Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. Tonight marks her Proms debut.

A host of British opera stars join Ben Glassberg and the BBC Philharmonic for a night rich in emotion and drama. After a year of lockdowns and social distancing, the themes of isolation and loneliness as well as the joy of reunion have particular poignancy in excerpts from much-loved operas including Handel’s Rodelinda, Beethoven’s Fidelio, Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel and Puccini’s La bohème.

Author Michael Morpurgo joins the seven talented Kanneh-Mason siblings and starry musical friends for this special Family Prom. Saint-Saëns’s much-loved suite The Carnival of the Animals – a musical menagerie packed with braying donkeys, energetic kangaroos, a serene swan and an aquarium of glinting fish – gets a fresh update in witty new poems by Morpurgo.

Award-winning Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson makes his much-anticipated Proms debut, as soloist in both Bach’s Keyboard Concerto in F minor, whose energised outer movements frame a ravishing central Adagio, and Mozart’s pioneering Piano Concerto K491, a rare minor-key work whose stormy, richly orchestrated music climaxes in a relentless dance. The Philharmonia Orchestra and its dynamic Finnish Principal Conductor Designate Santtu-Matias Rouvali frame the concert with two symphonies: Prokofiev’s playful ‘Classical’ Symphony, with its clever juxtaposition of traditional forms and contemporary colours, and the more loaded irony of Shostakovich’s compact Symphony No. 9.

From an icy Italian winter to the heady, sensual warmth of a South American summer: violinist Joshua Bell leads the Academy of St Martin in the Fields on a musical journey through the sights and sounds of two continents and four very different seasons. Inspired by Vivaldi’s best-known work, Piazzolla – Argentina’s 20th-century tango king, whose 100th anniversary we celebrate this year – created his own response, complete with musical quotations. While Vivaldi’s virtuosic concertos celebrate contrast – the freshness of spring, with its sudden thunderstorms, versus the languid heat of summer – Piazzolla’s musical landscape remains more constant, always swaying to the pervasive rhythm of the tango.

Smell the greasepaint and feel the blaze of those Broadway lights, as the BBC Concert Orchestra whisks you away for a night at the musicals. The toe-tapping favourites include songs from musicals including South Pacific, My Fair Lady, Anything Goes, Annie Get Your Gun and High Society, all performed by the ever-versatile BBC Concert Orchestra – and some special guest soloists.

Rising star Jonathon Heyward conducts the talented teenagers of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain in one of the all-time symphonic greats. Propelling the symphony into the Romantic age, Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’ is a celebration of scope and drama, a musical depiction of heroism that surges with pioneering spirit. Nicola Benedetti is the soloist in Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2 with its song-like slow movement – a work whose sardonic wit is balanced by a new lyricism that would come to dominate the composer’s later works. The Prom also includes a new NYOGB commission by British composer, jazz trumpeter and former BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist, Laura Jurd.