BBC Proms 2015 ‒ It’s that time of year again!

This is always an exciting day for Radio 3: the moment when the truly salivating line-up of concerts and events that make up the world’s biggest classical music festival is revealed, and we begin in earnest the incredibly detailed planning that goes into broadcasting every Prom live. The technical challenges are huge ‒ in the course of a single day the team of highly skilled studio managers might be called upon to capture anything from a solo violin to a brand new contemporary work for a 100-piece orchestra ‒ and things like how many microphones, how many miles of cable, and exactly how long it’s going to take to reset the stage between the main evening Proms and complicated late night events need to be thought about now.

For the production team it’s a case of working out how best to provide that all-important context for our listeners: why you really should tune in to this performance of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, why the Aurora orchestra’s performance of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony is going to be unlike any you’ve ever heard before (it really is), what fresh insights come to light as a result of hearing all of Prokofiev’s piano concertos in the course of one evening, and why the work of Pierre Boulez is so visionary and vital to our understanding of today’s musical world. A crucial part of this context is of course the fantastic line-up of Proms Extra events over at the Royal College of Music, where every day a carefully chosen panel of experts is there to guide you through that night’s offering; these are then edited straight afterwards and broadcast in the interval of the Prom. It’s a neat idea, but as with all these things, planning is everything.

There’s a sense in which you could say the Proms are all in a day’s work for us – Radio 3 broadcasts a concert live pretty much every night of the week, after all – but there’s something very special about de-camping to Kensington for the summer. There’s nothing quite like the excitement of the first night, the famous queue snaking all the way down the steps and probably round the corner too, the sight of our BBC trucks parked outside Door 9, the familiar smell back-stage at the Royal Albert Hall, the incredible air of anticipation in the Hall itself… and above all, the knowledge that you’ve got a whole eight magical weeks of world-class music-making to look forward to. It’s a huge amount of work, for sure, but a challenge each and every one of us relishes. Bring it on.

• BBC Proms
• BBC Radio 3
• Royal Albert Hall