Proms 2022: everything you need to know

The Proms are back – and I mean properly back, in swaggering style. The Covid restrictions are gone at last, so the Proms can do what it has always done best: the big blockbuster pieces such as Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis and Mahler’s Symphony No 2. And with Covid fears finally waning it’s a fair bet audiences will be filling the hall to capacity.

But it’s more than a joyous return to old traditions. The season truly lives up to the promise of the Proms’ founders, to spread “wider still and wider”. There are lunchtime concerts broadcast from every corner of the UK, from Truro to Belfast, big names such as Simon Rattle and András Schiff, plus a focus on bright young talent, a welcome to genres beyond classical, a mouthwatering range of international talent including the Berlin Philharmonic and Philadelphia Orchestras, and a truly diverse range of composers and performers and orchestras. Here is my pick of the 2022 Proms.

The hottest ticket

Prom 62, September 3
Prom 65, September 4

The reclusive conductor Kirill Petrenko will be conducting his own Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and, given the reaction at previous Proms, the two concerts are likely to sell out fast. The second of these features Shostakovich’s 10th symphony and Schnittke’s Viola Concerto, but I really want to hear them play the most puzzling and also most alluringly strange of Mahler’s symphonies, the seventh, in Prom 62.

The emotional rollercoaster

Prom 1, July 15

After two years when the expression of simple human emotion has been stifled, and a wretched “elbow bump” has had to do duty for a hug, we’re all in need of some emotional catharsis. The First Night of the Proms should provide it in spades, with a performance of the most heart-searing, overwhelming big choral blockbuster of them all: Verdi’s Requiem. It boasts a terrific cast, including new British tenor-on-the-block Freddie di Tommaso and young South African soprano Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha, together with the BBC Symphony and Crouch End choruses and the London Symphony Orchestra under the impassioned baton of Sakari Oramo.

The oddity

Prom 21, August 1

Slipping a wild card into the pack is one of the oldest Proms traditions. This year it’s a Gaming Prom. Just as the arrival of cinema gave a whole new lease of life to orchestral music, so the need to create exciting, evocative soundtracks for computer games has opened a vast lucrative new field – for those classical composers who are savvy enough to take advantage of it, and ignore the critics who say “it’s not really music”. The Royal Philharmonic’s Prom offers a mini-history of the genre, from 1980s classics to the latest release in the Battlefield franchise.

The must-see maestro

Prom 48, August 23

Again the choice of silver-haired maestri who electrify an audience as well as the players is large, from Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra (Prom 49, August 24) to Sir John Eliot Gardiner and his Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique (Prom 69, September 7). Top of the list for me is the 85-year-old Indian-born Zubin Mehta leading the Australian World Orchestra in a programme of Brahms, Debussy and Webern. He’s not been seen at the Proms for a decade, and the chance to see this vastly experienced and most naturally gifted conductor should not be missed.

The one that will make your spirit soar

Prom 61, September 2

Probably the most hallowed piece in the Proms calendar, Beethoven’s ninth symphony, with its journey from turmoil and struggle to pure joy, is particularly apt for these troubled times. And who better to bring this piece to life than Chineke!, Europe’s first majority-black and ethnically diverse orchestra, led by Chi-chi Nwanoku. Alongside the orchestra will be the newly-formed Chineke! Voices and a terrific all-black cast of soloists.

The one that shows the triumph of art over adversity

Prom number TBC, July 31

Canadian-Ukrainian musician Keri-Lynn Wilson conducts the newly formed Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra whose line up includes Ukrainian musicians who have recently been refugees, as well as nationals who are members of European orchestras and some of the country’s top performers from Kyiv to Odesa. The military-age male members of orchestras inside the country have been granted an exemption to perform in the new outfit, with the Proms being their second destination (after Warsaw).

The neglected gem

Prom 14, July 25

In its mission to educate as well as entertain, the Proms has always featured little-known works. This year, I’d recommend Ethel Smyth’s late Concerto for Violin and Horn. It’s always a shock to discover just how softly romantic this fierce composer could be (she once composed a March of the Women for the Suffragette movement), tempered by an elegiac mood that looks back to the horrors of the First World War.

The one to take the kids to

Proms 53 & 54, August 27

If your children are really young, you might want to take them to the CBeebies Prom: A Journey into the Ocean (Proms 11 & 12, July 23). But if they’re older, the Earth Prom should be just the ticket. It’s a visually and aurally spectacular traversal of the BBC’s Natural History Unit down the ages, from early black-and-white films featuring a startlingly young David Attenborough to the present, with emotive and evocative scores from Hans Zimmer and George Fenton, mingled with music from around the globe as well as sounds of nature.

The royal celebration

Prom 10, July 22

Britain’s monarchs have always been great patrons of music, and to celebrate the Queen’s 70 years on the throne, Prom 10 brings together pieces down the centuries which have been inspired by a royal occasion. Some of them you’d expect: Handel’s Coronation Anthems, Parry’s I was Glad and Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March No 4. Others, such as Judith Weir’s I Love all Beauteous Things, Vaughan Williams’s Silence and Music and the wonderful Courtly Dances from Britten’s opera Gloriana written for the Queen’s coronation in 1952, strike a different, less triumphal note.

The Last Night

Prom 72, September 10

After the political mire of 2020 and the rather subdued Last Night of 2021, this year’s had to be something special. There are two star guests, one of whom, the young cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, will be playing a new concerto specially composed for him by James B Wilson, whose influences range from the arcane modernism of Romanian modernist Horațiu Rădulescu to the 1963 Bristol Bus Boycott. Alongside him will be Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen, who’s gamely taken on the traditional Rule Britannia as well as arias by Verdi and Wagner. And there’s a nod to the centenary of composer Doreen Carwithen, in the shape of her amusingly titled overture ODTAA (One Damned Thing After Another). Dalia Stasevska conducts.

The Proms run from Friday July 15 to Saturday September 10. Tickets go on sale at 9am on Saturday May 21: 020 7589 8212; bbc.co.uk/proms