So it’s come to this: Jiri Belohlavek, Principal Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, demoted to playing vacuum cleaner while his Principal Guest Conductor, David Robertson, gets to preside over “Land of Hope and Glory”? Allow me to explain.

Not bringing Mendelssohn to the Proms was never an option for the Leipzig Gewandhaus in this the composer’s bicentennial year.

Two things are often forgotten about the ‘Messiah: that it was actually written for Easter, not Christmas, and that its original audience would have been very well-heeled - seats at ten shillings and sixpence were the equivalent of top-price opera seats today.

Something seems to have happened to Matthias Goerne. This German baritone was the wild child who once shed new light on Schubert’s songs, with his raw and visceral performances.

Radio 3 played matchmaker to the classical stars of the future, while Grimeborn made a triumphant return to Hackney

As if the line of succession between Schubert and Mahler were not plain enough, the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich had the Argentina-born composer Osvaldo Golijov illuminate the connections in his beautifully imagined orchestration of four Schubert songs She Was Here.

Having watched Joyce DiDonato break a leg at Covent Garden - and go on singing superbly as if nothing had happened - it was no surprise to find her effortlessly dominating a Prom a few weeks later.

The venerable Staatskapelle Dresden arrived at the Proms proudly bearing the excess luggage of Strauss’ Alpine Symphony – a piece dedicated expressly to them.

How do you musically represent the explosion of an atom bomb? Last year John Adams showed us in his new opera Dr Atomic: a succession of shattering brass triads in G sharp minor, with an extra hyper-romantic chord thrown in. Alfred Schnittke's way, half a century ago, was to bombard his audience with everything in his orchestral armoury – string and trombone glissandi, cluster-chords, roars on percussion, and tremolandi all round. But the Nagasaki oratorio which Valery Gergiev and the London Symphony Orchestra brought to the Proms didn't give us Schnittke the mature and playful "polystylist": this was Schnittke the student, and it showed.

How do you musically represent the explosion of an atom bomb?

It is impossible to separate the West-East Divan Orchestra from what they represent, so the climax of their two-day presence at the Proms – a concert performance of Beethoven’s Fidelio – was always going to carry a loaded political message.

Semyon Bychkov is one of the warmest of Russian conductors, and presided over what could have been a rather icy Prom. With a compelling splash of waterworlds in the UK premiere of a new work by Detlev Glanert, Shostakovich's ferocious Symphony No 11 and Rachmaninov's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini as sandwich filler, the evening grew in power, finishing on a tremendous high as Shostakovich shook his fist at tyranny.

Decades later and we've grown to love Birtwistle's rich and strange sound world. A concert to celebrate the composer's 75th birthday is met with shock and awe – as well as affection