The 2026 BBC Proms season plays host to music by Thomas Adès, Francisco Coll, Imogen Holst, Oliver Knussen, Colin Matthews and Ralph Vaughan Williams at the Royal Albert Hall.
On 11 August Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra mark their visit to the festival with Adès’ Inferno, the first part of his ballet Dante, choreographed by Wayne McGregor and designed by Tacita Dean. The orchestra and conductor’s recording of the ballet won a Grammy in 2024; they repeat Inferno at the Edinburgh International Festival on 15 August.
A 45-minute portrait of Dante and Virgil’s journey into Hell, Inferno unfolds over 13 sections. It features a dark-hued rendering of Liszt’s La Lugubre Gondola to usher in The Ferryman who rows dead souls across the river Styx; an extravagant, riotous orchestration of the Grand Galop Chromatique is a virtuosic representation of the reptilian Thieves. A Pavan represents the souls trapped in Limbo, and a Tchaikovskian Adagio depicts ambitious Popes, buried heads down.
Adès himself takes to the podium on 8 August to conduct Purgatorio – the central panel of Dante – with the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. The 24-minute piece uses pre-recorded voices in the form of cantorial chanting from the Sephardi Adès synagogue in Jerusalem; this traditional Syrian hazzanut singing leads the ascent of mount Purgatory. Adès last appeared with NYOGB at the Proms in 2017, conducting his spiralling “voyage for orchestra” Polaris and Francisco Coll’s vast Mural.
John Wilson and the Sinfonia of London present Imogen Holst’s Suite for String Orchestra in a matinee concert on 6 September; it appears alongside music by Frank Bridge, Benjamin Britten, and Lennox Berkeley. The 15-minute piece, premiered by the composer in 1943, opens with a lilting Prelude in 5/8 of shifting patterns; it is succeeded by a rambunctious fugue with a rugged folk-like subject in three. The third movement is a limpid intermezzo with a spotlight on a solo violin in its middle section; the finale is a scurrying Gigue (presto).
Two vibrant orchestrations also appear at the festival this summer. David Afkham conducts the Spanish National Orchestra in Francisco Coll’s arrangement of Manuel de Falla’s Fantasia Baetica on 19 July. The earthy piano showpiece bears the stamp of flamenco influences – a consistent musical reference point in Coll’s own compositions; his 12-minute orchestration was commissioned by the BBC Philharmonic and has appeared since its 2023 Aldeburgh Festival premiere with the Toronto Symphony, Orquesta Sinfónica del Principado de Asturias, and Royal Liverpool Philharmonic.
On 5 August Kahchun Wong conducts Colin Matthews’ sensuous orchestration of Ravel’s La Vallée des Cloches from Miroirs with the Hallé. The 6-minute piece – one of two pieces in the original that Ravel did not orchestrate himself – premiered with Nicholas Collon and the BBC Philharmonic in 2017.
Thomas Søndergård opens the Royal Scottish National Orchestra’s 3 August Prom with Oliver Knussen’s Flourish with Fireworks – premiered in 1993 by the LSO with the late Michael Tilson Thomas. The Stravinsky-inspired 4-minute orchestral showpiece – a work of “unbounded effervescence” (Tom Service, the Guardian) – opened the RSNO’s season in September 2025. On 4 September Andrew Manze opens his concert with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic with Ralph Vaughan Williams’ iconic Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis – its 40th performance at the Proms.