. . . BRING A TEAR TO THE EYE

Could this season’s most improbable collaboration also be the most moving? Quite possibly, as the polished period-in-strument pros of John Eliot Gardiner’s English Baroque Soloists mix with the young South Africans of the Buskaid Soweto String Ensemble and a Parisian dance troupe to perform music by the Baroque composer Rameau (July 15).

You might also try Two of Europe’s finest period-instru-ment bands, the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, join forces for Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks (Aug 23). And An-gela Hewitt, perhaps the world’s finest player of Baroque keyboard music on the modern piano, performs Bach and Scarlatti in a Cadogan Hall lunchtime Prom (Sept 3).

. . . LEAVE THE ALBERT HALL ROOFLESS

Brass Day promises to be a blast (July 28). From 2pm till 10pm every possible combination of trumpets, horns, trombones and whatnots plays brass music ranging from Gabrieli to specially commissioned fanfares. Among the distinguished combos are the Grimethorpe Colliery and Black Dyke bands.

You might also try More inspired brass-playing when Richard Watkins tackles Brit-ten’s mesmerising Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings in a Nash Ensemble concert with the tenor Andrew Kennedy. That’s one of several Saturday matinee Proms in Cadogan Hall (Sept 1).

. . . ECLIPSE EVEN THOMAS TALLIS Spem in alium, Tallis’s motet for eight five-part choirs, has long been recognised as a supreme masterpiece of Renaissance polyphony. But in this late-night Prom (July 17) it is flanked by a 40-part motet written by Tallis’s Italian contemporary Alessandro Striggio and by a recently discovered Striggio Mass that branches into 60 vocal lines at the end! Expect your mind to be boggled and your ears stretched.

You might also try Haydn’s The Seasons, a choral tour de force from a later era, is performed by the Handel and Haydn Society of Boston – founded in the year of Water-loo, and still one of America’s top ensembles. Roger Nor-rington, its new artistic advi-sor, conducts (July 23). That city’s other eminent musical body, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, also plays at the Proms (Sept 6, 7).

. . . BE SHEER MURDER

The bloody deeds of Macbeth and wife, turned into opera by Verdi, are part of a Shakespearean theme running through the season. With the stunning Vladimir Jurowski conducting Glyndebourne forces it should be an impassioned night (July 24).

You might also try Richard Strauss’s take on Macbeth, done as an orchestral tone-poem, is played by the Hallé (July 27). Another operatic figure behaving badly, in Bar-tók’s sizzling psychodrama Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, arrives at the Proms on Aug 20.

. . . REMIND YOU OF STRICTLY COME DANCING

Will we coo or squirm when the world’s greatest violinist attempts to tango on the Albert Hall platform? All will be revealed when Maxim Vengerov gives the British premiere of Benjamin Yusupov’s bizarre-sounding Viola Tango Rock Concerto, which requires the Russian to slither and shimmy in tandem with a professional hoofer (Aug 18).

You might also try Rather more authentic South American exuberance from the huge Simón Bolivár National Youth Orchestra of Venezue-la, which plays Shostako-vich’s Tenth Symphony under that wunderkind Gustavo Dudamel (Aug 19). Compare and contrast with our own National Youth Orchestra playing Shostakovich’s Seventh under Mark Elder (Aug 4).

. . . INDUCE CONTEMPLATION OF THINGS ETERNAL

Bach’s cantatas are sublime expressions of faith, and these days the heartland of Bach performance is . . . Japan! That may be your impression, anyway, after hearing Masa-aki Suzuki’s Bach Collegium Japan perform three cantatas and a short Bach mass (Aug 7, late night).

You might also try Götter-dämmerung is pretty eternal too. But aching calves or numb bums will surely be forgotten when Christine Brewer and John Tomlinson are in full cry (Aug 12).

. . . SET YOUR FINGERS CLICKING

The veteran jazzers John Dankworth and Cleo Laine, plus big band, pay their own tribute to the Bard and then branch off in all sorts of mildly groovy directions (Aug 8).

You might also try Is now the moment to mention the Proms debut of the West End crooner Michael Ball (Aug 27)? I suppose it has to be.

. . . SPREAD PANIC THROUGH THE ALBERT HALL

Plenty of premieres are scattered through the season, but none is likely to cause the outrage that Harrison Birtwistle’s Panictriggered at the Last Night of the 1995 Proms. It’s unlikely to have the same impact second time round, but you never know (Aug 16).

You might also try Those two uncompromising veterans of the avant-garde, Birtwistle and Pierre Boulez, can be heard in a late-night Prom (July 31), when the former’s Neruda Madrigales and the latter’s Derive 2 both receive London premieres. But the season’s biggest premiere is likely to be John Adams’s Doctor Atomic Symphony, drawn from Adams’s recent controversial opera about Robert Oppenheimer, the “father” of the nuclear bomb.

. . . GIVE YOU A SENSE OF DÉJÀ VU

How wonderful to have the magisterial Mariss Jansons conducting his Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (Aug 30). But hang on! Won’t we already have heard the piece, played by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under JirÍ Belohlávek, on the First Night (July 13)? The BBC claims that it will be interesting to hear “contrasting forces” play the same work. Piffle. It’s not as if one lot use period instruments, or eau de cologne, and the other lot don’t. It’s just a cockup.

You might also try The Armenian fiddle sensation Sergey Khachatryan playing Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, with Riccardo Chailly and the rejuvenated Leipzig Gewand-haus Orchestra (Sept 5).

. . . RAVISH EAR AND EYE

From cleaner to diva, Anna Netrebko has soared into the top rank of operatic stars, and it is pointless to pretend that her catwalk looks haven’t played a part. But the Russian delivers the vocal and dramatic goods too, as the Last Night audience will discover when she sings the sleepwalking scene from Bellini’s La sonnambula Sep 8).

You might also try No less gorgeous, the American diva Renée Fleming sings Berg and Korngold (Aug 6); while Debo-rah Voigt, another great American soprano, will doubtless chew all available scenery in the last scene of Strauss’s bloodcrazed Salome (Sept 1).

The Proms run from July 13 to Sept 8. Advance booking by post and online from Monday, www.bbc.co.uk/proms . General booking opens June 11 (020-7589 8212)

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