Preview: BBC Proms 2014

The world’s biggest classical music festival, the BBC Proms, has just announced its 120th season, with a programme of extravagant diversity that commemorates the outbreak of the First World War, and inaugurates a season of international orchestras. As always, there are some startling Proms debutants: this year, it’s the Pet Shop Boys and the CBeebies characters, whose inclusion has already set Twitter ablaze. Sir Henry Wood established The Proms in 1895 to attract a wide and popular audience, in order to educate concert-goers to appreciate more complex modern music. Even he can’t have imagined this would one day include tiny children’s animations, or another innovation this year, the BBC Sport Prom, with Gabby Logan presenting a concert of sport-themed pieces, including the theme tunes to Match of the Day, Wimbledon, and Test Match Special.      

The Proms has always marked anniversaries attentively, and this year, they’re celebrating the 150th anniversary of Richard Strauss, with performances of his four most popular operas, Salome, Elektra, Die Frau ohne Schatten and Der Rosenkavalier, alongside some of his most strikingly original orchestral pieces, such as Metamorphosen and Tod und Verklärung. Performers include Valery Gergiev’s World Orchestra for Peace, in their only UK appearance this year, and the German repertoire experts from the Deutsche Oper, Berlin. Mahler fans also have a great season to look forward to, with symphonies 1,2,3,4,5,6 and 9 all played for the enthusiastic Albert Hall audience.

Other important anniversaries include two of contemporary British music’s most important figures, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and Sir Harrison Birtwhistle, who both have dedicated Proms Portraits, on 30 August and 6 September respectively. Meanwhile, Steve Reich, widely regarded as the founder of minimalism, has his own late Prom on 13 August.

The traditional orchestral heavy-hitters return with Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, playing a Spanish-themed programme on 20 August, while Sir Simon Rattle and the Berliner Philarmoniker return on 5 September to perform a concert of Russian, dance-inspired repertoire. But this year’s festival is making a point of reaching further afield, and inviting orchestras who have never before performed in the RAH. These include the Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra from Turkey, Armonia Atenea from Greece, the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, the China Philharmonic Orchestra, the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, playing Chinese Zhou Long’s piano concerto.

The First World War repertoire includes many pieces by contemporaries of the conflict, such as Vaughan Williams, Elgar and George Butterworth. A different take on the conflict is supplied by the War Horse Prom, on 3 August, when life-size War Horse puppets take to the stage, accompanied by Gareth Malone’s Military Wives Choir.

The Proms have always adapted popular music for the concert stage, and this year’s engagement with that repertoire includes appearances by Laura Mvula and Paloma Faith, though the Pet Shop Boys are this year's surprise pop act. They will perform arrangements of some of their songs, as well as the world première of A Man from the Future, a new piece for electronics, orchestra, choir and narrator, inspired by the life of mathematician Alan Turing, and performed on the 60th anniversary of his death. Jazz fans, however, will be disappointed, with little recognisable jazz included this year, bar the enjoyable Battle of the Bands, on 8 August, a recreation of period big band head-to-heads.