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.

Musical borrowings, reworkings and reinventions run through this season’s Proms. The invisible thread linking tonight’s concert really begins with Bach. A lilting chaconne from his Cantata No. 150 underpins the finale of Brahms’s Symphony No. 4, and the latter’s elegant synthesis of heart and head is itself the inspiration for American composer Elizabeth Ogonek’s Cloudline, a lyrical homage to ancient musical forms and techniques. The chaconne’s repeating patterns are echoed elsewhere in the circling bass line of Purcell’s powerful Lament from Dido and Aeneas. Cellist Guy Johnston is the soloist in anniversary-composer Saint-Saëns’s Cello Concerto No .1.

The Scottish Chamber Orchestra and their young Principal Conductor Maxim Emelyanychev showcase Mozart’s final three symphonies – composed over a period of just two months in the summer of 1788.

Nicholas Collon and the Aurora Orchestra’s from-memory performances have become a thrilling recent fixture of the Proms. Now, following symphonies by Beethoven, Brahms, Shostakovich and Berlioz, they tackle their most audacious challenge yet: a complete performance of the colourful 1945 suite from Stravinsky’s ballet The Firebird. Russian fairy tales and folk melodies collide with Stravinsky’s bold musical modernism to create a memorable score. Radio 3 presenter Tom Service introduces the work from the stage, exploring its textures and themes and dismantling its intricate musical narrative with the help of Collon and his musicians. The concert opens with another Russian classic: Rachmaninov’s virtuosic Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, with former BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist Pavel Kolesnikov as soloist.

The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Music Director Mirga Gražinyt?-Tyla champion the music of a too-long neglected composer. A pupil of Vaughan Williams, Ruth Gipps started her career as an oboist with what was then the City of Birmingham Orchestra in 1944, before becoming established as a composer. Her Symphony No. 2 takes a wide-screen, cinematic view of the Second World War, embracing exhilaration, anxiety and, finally, ecstatic rejoicing. Conflict of a very different kind runs through The Exterminating Angel Symphony by Thomas Adès (50 this year), inspired by Louis Buñuel’s Surrealist film.

Brahms’s Third Symphony strikes a more autumnal tone, inspired by a visit to the River Rhine in 1883. The critic Eduard Hanslick pronounced it ‘artistically the most nearly perfect’ of the composer’s symphonies to date.

Katie Derham presents from the Royal Albert Hall, as the opening concert of the 2021 Proms season continues in front of a live audience. Conductor Dalia Stasevska and the BBC Symphony Orchestra perform Sibelius’s thrilling Second Symphony. They are joined by soloists including soprano Elizabeth Llewellyn and tenor Allan Clayton for the world premiere of When Soft Voices Die, a poignant piece for our times by Scottish composer Sir James MacMillan.