Music Correspondent
BBCOrganisers of the BBC Proms are encouraging fans to stay up all night, with a “magical” and “intimate” after-hours concert at the Royal Albert Hall.
Plans for the Dark Till Dawn Prom were unveiled in the programme announcing the summer festival, which will also feature one-handed pianist Nicholas McCarthy, rock star St Vincent and a celebration of film composer Bernard Herrmann.
The ever-popular CBeebies Prom will return, and Claudia Winkelman will host a concert exploring the tense and haunting soundtrack to the hit TV show The Traitors.
Highlights of the classical repertoire include Shoshtakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth, and Korean sensation Yunchan Lim playing Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No 4.
On 5 September, Sir Simon Rattle will conduct Chineke! – Europe’s first minority Black and ethnically diverse orchestra – for the first time.
Their concert will include a performance of the final work by Pulitzer-winning US composer George Walker, which was written as a response to the 2015 Charleston church shooting.
Other stars gracing the 2025 season include soprano of the moment Aigul Akhmetshina, making her Proms debut, violinist Randall Goosby, sitar virtuoso Anoushka Shankar, Pakistani-American singer Arroj Aftab, and Grammy award-winner Angelique Kidjo.
There will be 84 concerts in all, with a number taking place in Gateshead, Bristol, Bradford, Belfast and Sunderland.
Tickets go on sale at 9am on 17 May. On-the-day “Promming” tickets are £8 including booking fees, and seated tickets start from £10 plus booking fees.
PA MediaThe all-nighter, on 8 August, is being planned by organist Anna Lapwood, who said the idea had been several years in the making.
“I spend a lot of time at the Albert Hall in the middle of the night, practicing, and I find it fascinating that the building is still just running overnight,” she says.
“There are always people there – cleaners and security guards – a bit like A Night At The Museum.
“So we talked about how fun it would be to be able to invite people into that space, both physically, but also the abstract space of being in an iconic building in the middle of the night.”
Her programme will include YouTube pianist Hayato Sumino, Russian cellist Anastasia Kobekina and Norwegian ensemble Barroksolistene, whose “Alehouse sessions” aim to recreate the atmosphere of a 17th Century English tavern.
Lapwood says the artists are all connected by an enthusiasm for “messing around” with music, citing Sumino’s viral video of the “seven degrees of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star“.
“There are various moments where we’re hoping to do some collaborations,” she reveals. “But the logistics of this are all very, very complicated, not least trying to figure out everyone’s sleep schedules!”
This summer’s season is the first since the departure of Proms director David Pickard. He has been replaced by Hannah Donat who, as director of artistic planning, had shaped the festival alongside the controller of BBC Radio 3, Sam Jackson.
“I think of the Proms as the classical music equivalent of Wimbledon,” she says.
“Everyone likes to go to Wimbledon, even if they don’t watch tennis for the rest of the year; and everyone likes to go to a Prom, even if they’re not going to concerts for the rest of the season.”
“It gives the concerts a warmth and an informal atmosphere.
“People don’t worry too much about knowing the repertoire inside out – there’s just something spectacular about the Albert Hall and seeing the orchestra onstage.”
Among the concerts to watch out for are:
19 July: The Great American Songbook and Beyond with Samara Joy. Fresh from winning best jazz album at this year’s Grammys, US singer Samara Joy teams up with the BBC Concert Orchestra for a night of standards by Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Billie Holliday.
20 July: Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand. The world’s only professional one-handed concert pianist, Nicholas McCarthy, makes his Proms debut, playing a concerto originally written for Paul Wittgenstein, after he lost his right arm during World War One.
26 July: The Traitors. “I’ve asked for a cloak and an owl,” says Claudia Winkelman, ahead of this one-off concert, featuring classical pieces “with betrayal at their heart” alongside the gothic re-workings of pop songs heard in the TV reality show.
2 August: Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony. Canadian mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo, whose voice has been called “a thing of wonder”, makes her Proms debut with Norwegian soprano Mari Eriksmoen and the Hallé orchestra.
8 August: 100 Years of the Shipping Forecast. The subtle magic of the Shipping Forecast is celebrated in a special concert, in Belfast’s Ulster Hall, featuring Radio 4’s continuity announcers and a new work by poet laureate Simon Armitage.
9 August: The Planets and Star Wars. The National Youth Orchestra play two of the world’s most recognisable pieces of orchestral music, with an intergalactic theme.
10 August: Edward Gardner Conducts the LPO. Taking a journey through icy waters and cascading waterfalls, the London Philharmonic present a quartet of pieces, including Debussy’s La Mer and Sibelius’s Oceanides – with an aquatic theme. Electrifying mezzo-soprano Aigul Akhmetshina joins in, for her Proms debut.
14 August: Joe Hisaishi and Steve Reich. Legendary Studio Ghibli composer Joe Hisaishi makes his Proms debut conducting the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, playing his symphony The End Of The World, inspired by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
23 August: Mäkelä conducts Mahler’s Fifth. Finnish conductor Klaus Mäkelä isn’t yet 30, but his electrifying performances have already made headlines around the world. He comes to the Proms with the Dutch Concertgebouw Orchestra, to play Mahler’s leonine fifth symphony.
7 September: Angelique Kidjo – African Symphony. “I want to show the world the richness and beauty of African culture,” says the Beninese-French music icon Angelique Kidjo of her return to the Proms. Part of Bradford’s City of Culture programme, her concert will highlight iconic tracks from legends including Miriam Makeba, Fela Kuti and Youssou N’Dour.
The season concludes with the traditional “Last Night” on 13 September, conducted by Elim Chan.
Soprano Louise Alder and trumpeter Alison Balsam will make star turns, alongside the traditional medley of sea shanties, Pomp and Circumstance and Auld Lang Syne.
The concert will also include Donat’s favourite “Easter egg” for her first year in charge.
“There’s a piece of music that I’d wanted to get into the Proms for some time,” she says, referring to Arthur Benjamin’s Storm Cloud Contata.
The music was originally written for Alfred Hitchcock’s spy thriller The Man Who Knew Too Much in 1934; and re-arranged by Bernard Herrmann for Hitchcock’s Hollywood remake in 1956.
“The final scene takes place in the Albert Hall,” explains Dotan, “and while Jimmy Stewart’s chasing this assassin around the building, Bernard Herrmann is conducting the orchestra on stage – and that’s the piece we’re including in the Last Night of the Proms.
“It’s one of those little winks to the audience that I like to include during the season.”
For those who cannot attend, all of the concerts will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and BBC Sounds, and 25 of the nights will be televised.