From Mozart’s unfinished final masterpiece to an absurdist Samuel Beckett opera: our picks for the 2023 Proms

Prom season is back, with the world’s biggest classical music festival kicking off this weekend. Michael Church selects his highlights

Prom season has arrived (Mark Allan)

It’s very good to have the Proms back, even if they’ve not yet completely recovered from a pandemic which almost halted them, while recent machinations within the BBC are still taking their toll. The official Proms brochure makes no mention of the BBC Singers because it went to press after they had all been sacked, but before the BBC relented under pressure and permitted the singers a new lease of life. So we only learned online that this excellent group will indeed be performing in some interesting experimental works they themselves have commissioned (Prom 69a).

This year there is the familiar mixture of highbrow and lowbrow fare, with the usual bits of modish box-ticking. There will be a Mindful Mix Prom (34), and the English National Opera will participate in two Horrible Histories Proms (10 and 11). Proms around the UK will take place in Aberystwyth, Dewsbury, Derry, and Great Yarmouth, in the hope that the BBC will get brownie points for regional inclusiveness. The anniversaries being celebrated will include those of William Byrd, Sergei Rachmaninov, and Gyorgy Ligeti, guaranteeing – particularly in the case of the latter – much fine and seldom-heard music.

Here are my personal choices: