DEBUT's Pick of the Proms 2025!

Summer in the UK wouldn’t be the same without the BBC Proms - and this year’s season might just be the most exciting yet. The 2025 lineup is bursting with fresh energy, new voices, and boundary-pushing performances (that I never thought I’d see!) that are set to shake up the Royal Albert Hall in all the best ways.

At DEBUT, we’re all about spotlighting what’s next in the classical world, and this year’s Proms are seriously delivering. Whether you’re a die-hard prommer or someone dipping their toe into classical for the first time, there’s something in the programme that’ll make you sit up and listen - we can’t wait to dive in.

Hannah caught up with Ellie Ajao - proms expert, freelance author and presenter - to get her top picks for the 2025 season.
It’s going to be an incredibly exciting summer!

TRADITIONAL PROM PICK

Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony – Wednesday 10th September

I’ve picked this Prom as its programme – as well as being fantastic – is very accessible.

It starts with a short piece, followed by a concerto, with a meaty symphony after the interval. The Proms team have even labelled this concert as ‘Classical for starters’, so if you’re looking to try your first Prom, this might be one to start with.
It opens with one of my favourite pieces of music ever written, Lili Boulanger’s effervescent D’un matin de printemps (of a spring morning). The piece really feels like dew drops on leaves and frogs hopping from lily-pad to lily-pad, and you can hear chirping birds and buzzing bees from the very first note.
Then, one of Shostakovich’s best-loved pieces: his First Cello Concerto. It’s angsty, colourful and sneakily filled to the brim with twisted Soviet folk-songs. Add former BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist Anastasia Kobekina to the mix and you’ve got an absolute match made in heaven. Making her Proms debut in 2024, Kobekina is a delight to listen to and watch, and I’m certain her interpretation of the Shostakovich will be sublime.
For the second half, Rachmaninov’s slushy, mushy and ravishingly Romantic Second Symphony played by one of the BBC’s own orchestras, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of Delyana Lazarova. It’s sure to be a treat.

WOMEN-FRONTED

Last Night of the Proms 2025 – Saturday 13th September

It feels almost sacrilegious to write anything about the Last Night of the Proms (LNotP) before tickets for the regular season have even gone on sale, but it would be remiss of me not to mention the fact that we have our first EVER female-fronted LNotP. Heck!
Elim Chan returns to the podium to direct the BBC SO after a stellar FNotP, with a delicious programme including Mussorgsky’s evocative Night on the Bare Mountain (in its original, 1867 form) and Dukas’s beloved Sorcerer’s Apprentice, now synonymous with Disney’s 1940/2000 Fantasia. However, things get particularly spicy when you notice the pair of BBC commissions in this concert are by women composers, we look forward to hearing the world premieres of Camille Pépin’s Fireworks and The Gathering Tree by Rachel Portman.
As well as this, Alison Balsom plays Hummel’s E flat Trumpet Concerto and soprano Louise Alder is certain to dazzle throughout the evening. In between the girlpower you’ll hear the usual selection of music from men usually found “in a wig and on a wall” (I have Errollyn Wallen to thank for that exquisite phrase), but we all enjoy a sing song of Auld Lang Syne and Jerusalem to bring the summer to a rousing close.
The Last Night is an evening steeped in history and controversy, but it’s hideously exciting to have women front and centre in this, classical music’s biggest party.

DELECTABLY DIVERSE

Rattle conducts Chineke! – Friday 5th September

Yes, you read that right!

Two worlds collide as classical music royalty, Sir Simon Rattle, conducts the UK’s first (and only) majority Black and ethnically diverse orchestra, Chineke!.
The ticket-seller will, no doubt, be Shostakovich’s mighty Tenth Symphony, a work which outlines life in Stalin’s Russia, but the music that comprises the first half is a veritable platter of diverse gold.
The concert opens with Coleridge-Taylor’s vibrant dance for orchestra, The Bamboula, a piece inspired by a traditional African drum and dance, originally brought to the Americas and the Caribbean by enslaved Africans.
Then, George Walker’s Sinfonia No. 5, ‘Visions’.
The first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize, Walker completed this piece at the ripe age of 94, outraged and deeply affected by the 2015 Charleston church massacre. It’s largely atonal, expressive, energetic and, understandably, filled with anger.
This concert promises to touch any classical music enthusiast, and to show, through music, what it means to feel and to thrive in spite of oppression.

WILDCARD

The Cavemen – Tuesday 12th August, Late Night Prom

Now, it’s worth noting that I am not a huge advocate for staying out late. I like my sofa far too much to be out on the town after 10pm.
However, I may well make an exception for this hugely intriguing Prom.
The Cavemen. are a Nigerian ‘highlife’ band, a ‘goodtime’ genre predating afrobeats that epitomised the West African nightlife scene in the 1960s. Think plucked, intricate guitars, dazzling horns and unceasing percussion, and sheer, boundless joy, and you’re on the right tracks.

Oh, and it isn’t classical, but it’s certainly worth a watch.

- Thanks Ellie! Head over to Ellie’s instagram to discover her podcast: Down with the Patribachy - and find out more about her work to make the classical music industry a more equitable, accessible and diverse space.

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