The festival opens with Elgar’s biblical oratorio The Kingdom – the beautiful ‘slow movement’ of a planned musical triptych. Celebrated Elgarian Sir Andrew Davis conducts the massed forces of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and the BBC National Chorus of Wales. They are joined by a distinguished cast of soloists including Proms regulars Christopher Purves and Catherine Wyn-Rogers.

The Glyndebourne Festival’s annual visit to the Proms continues our Strauss 150th-anniversary celebrations with a semi-staging of his sparkling comic opera Der Rosenkavalier. Conductor Robin Ticciati conjures this gilded fantasy of fin-de-siècle Vienna with the help of an international cast, led by British soprano Kate Royal in her role debut as the Marschallin.

One of choral music’s greatest works, Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass is a passionate, secular oratorio celebrating nationhood and peace. By contrast, conflict is to the fore in Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 1, a work that distils the drama of the composer’s relationship with Schumann and his wife Clara. Valery Gergiev conducts the London Symphony Orchestra, with soloist Barry Douglas.

Turbulent mythical love meets poised Classical elegance in a concert from the BBC Symphony Orchestra that sets Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 alongside Ravel’s sensuous ballet score Daphnis and Chloe. Launching us far beyond either Mozart’s Vienna or Ravel’s Paris, Jonathan Dove’s new orchestral work Gaia Theory explores the idea of life on our planet evolving alongside the environment.

Returning for its second concert this season, Les Arts Florissants is joined by founder-conductor William Christie for a Late Night Prom that transforms the Royal Albert Hall into the gilded splendour of the Chapel Royal at Versailles, combining choir, orchestra and soloists for Rameau’s Grands Motets.

Two rarely heard masterpieces continue our 150th-anniversary celebrations of Richard Strauss: the mighty Festival Prelude and the Deutsche Motette (practically a concerto for choir). We move to more familiar musical territory with Strauss’s Four Last Songs, whose late-Romantic nostalgia is shared by Elgar’s Second Symphony.

This concert from the European Union Youth Orchestra opens with Berio’s 20th-century classic, Sinfonia – a witty, whistle-stop tour through centuries of Western culture, from Bach to The Beatles. Shostakovich’s embattled Fourth Symphony attempts to reconcile the same conflicts and contradictions as Berio, but finds only Babel and madness, in one of the composer’s most confrontational works.

Sakari Oramo conducts the BBC Symphony Chorus and BBC Singers in one of the great 20th-century dramatic showpieces – Stravinsky’s vivid and visceral ‘opera-oratorio’ Oedipus rex. The concert opens with Beethoven’s beloved Egmont overture.

The BBC Proms welcomes back Canadian violinist James Ehnes as soloist in Walton’s virtuosic yet intimate Violin Concerto. Søndergård and the BBC NOW continue with a suite from Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’s ballet Caroline Mathilde and two great orchestral works by Sibelius – his soaring Fifth Symphony and the more delicate, mystical Swan of Tuonela.

The Aurora Orchestra and Nicholas Collon contrast Mozart’s graceful Symphony with two much newer pieces: Dobrinka Tabakova’s hurdy-gurdy-inflected Spinning a Yarn and Benedict Mason’s audacious BBC commission, Meld.

Wilfred Owen’s shattering verse sits at the heart of Britten’s War Requiem – that great pacifist outpouring of horror and sorrow. Performed here in this First World War centenary year by the same orchestra which premiered it in 1962, in this performance the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Music Director Andris Nelsons are joined by the BBC Proms Youth Choir.

Celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, the Monteverdi Choir returns to the Proms under Sir John Eliot Gardiner for one of the greatest choral works of the repertoire – Beethoven’s mighty Missa solemnis. Join them on this tumultuous spiritual journey in music that defies simple resolution.

In a symphony that took over six years to complete, Mahler wrestles with the essential questions of humanity. Birth, death and the fragile stages between are the subject of this grand musical exploration, which culminates in a transcendent choral finale. Daniel Harding and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra are joined by soloists Kate Royal and Chistianne Stotijn.

In Richard Strauss’s 150th-anniversary year the Proms presents a double bill of his two great tragedies. On consecutive nights his heroines Salome and Elektra meet their bloody ends in the Royal Albert Hall. Donald Runnicles brings his Deutsche Oper forces to the Proms for Salome. Star soprano Nina Stemme leads the cast as the troubled princess.

Elektra – Strauss’s brutal and ferociously powerful retelling of the Greek revenge myth – continues this weekend’s opera double bill. The BBC Symphony Orchestra and Semyon Bychkov are joined by an international cast of soloists, led by American soprano Christine Goerke, with Danish baritone Johan Reuter as her beloved brother Orestes.

Mahler’s epic, unorthodox Third Symphony unfolds over six movements, painting a musical portrait with choir and orchestra of nature’s very essence. American conductor Alan Gilbert returns to conduct this masterpiece with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra.