With concerts getting under way this weekend – live on BBC Radio 3 from the Royal Albert Hall and elsewhere – here are the highlights as the Proms return to form.

The pandemic was a watershed in the arts: the BC/AD of funding, programming, planning – of survival, even. The BBC Proms are classical music’s too-big-to-fail, but there have been a few transitional years with the festival still on a war footing: leaner, safer, less international. But with a new boss – former Classic FM dynamo Sam Jackson – in charge, 2025 looks like a return to form and to full force.

The major world orchestras are always the bellwether. Nothing shows confidence quite like shipping some 100 musicians overseas for one night only. So when you look down the listings and see visits from the Vienna Philharmonic, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Royal Concertgebouw, Budapest Festival Orchestra and Melbourne Symphony (among others), it’s a sign of good times ahead.

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