A complete Ring cycle conducted by Daniel Barenboim, making his UK debut as a Wagnerian, will be a highlight of the 119th BBC Proms season this summer – which will also be the first festival in its history to have the last night conducted by a woman.
Marin Alsop will take the baton for the evening of celebration in the Royal Albert Hall on 7 September, leading the BBC Symphony Orchestra through the mix of traditional favourites, including the Londonderry Air and Parry's Jerusalem, as well as a new work by US-based British composer Anna Clyne and star turns from violinist Nigel Kennedy and mezzo soprano Joyce DiDonato. The latter will sing, among other arias, Over the Rainbow – according to Roger Wright, the director of the Proms, "the most authentic performance you'll ever hear, since Joyce is actually from Kansas".
Renowned as a confident, warm communicator, Alsop, a New Yorker, is a former chief conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, and now leads the symphony orchestras of Baltimore and São Paulo.
According to Wright, the reason it has taken over a century for a woman to take on this landmark role in the British arts calendar – party host and orchestral conductor rolled into one – is "the weight of history. There are also clearly issues about the sort of schooling conductors go through and how family roles have been divided traditionally; role models have been slow to come through." Alsop is one of five women to lead Proms this year, out of around 50 conductors in total.
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Wright said that he did not "programme by demographic" and that the last night programme "plays to Alsop's strengths as a conductor". Musically, he said, it would be a "cracking evening".
This year will be the first to see Proms broadcast not only on Radio 3 as usual, but also, for selected events, on Radios 1, 1Xtra, 4 Extra and 6 Music. There will also be regular TV broadcasts on BBC2 and 4. For the first time, chamber music Proms will be filmed for broadcast online and for future transmission on BBC4.
On the 6 Music Prom, Steve Lamacq and the Guardian writer Tom Service will present music from Cerys Matthews, Laura Marling and the Stranglers alongside work by Luciano Berio, Edgard Varèse, John Adams and the young Scottish composer Anna Meredith, performed by the London Sinfonietta.
The first "urban prom", to be broadcast on Radio 1 and 1Xtra, will combine music by the German modernist Hans Werner Henze and the Soviet futurist Alexander Mosolov with performances by singers Faser, Laura Mvula and Maverick Sabre. Wright said he hoped the initiatives would "get the message out about the Proms". The point was to "take the audience further" and, by making unusual juxtapositions, present "concerts you wouldn't get elsewhere".
The purpose of these Proms aimed at lassooing a younger, more pop-literate audience was "audience development", he said – as was "the fact that we are mounting a free Prom, with Beethoven's Ninth Symphony performed by the National Youth Orchestra; and we are keeping the promming tickets at £5 for the eighth consecutive year". He added: "This is what it's all about: high artistic ambition, high quality and low ticket prices."
Barenboim's Ring cycle, for which he will conduct his own orchestra, the Berlin Staatskapelle, will be performed over the week of 22 July. Bryn Terfel will sing Wotan in Die Walküre and Nina Stemme will take on Brünnhilde. In the year of Wagner's centenary, the Proms will also mount performances of Tristan, Tannhäuser and Parsifal – conducted by Semyon Bychkov, Donald Runnicles and Sir Mark Elder respectively. The programmes would amount to a celebration of a current "golden age of Wagnerian and conducting", said Wright.
There will be significant world premieres, including a major 45-minute song cycle by Thomas Adès called Totentanz, based on a 15th-century text by an unknown author that accompanied a frieze destroyed when Lübeck's Marienkirche was bombed in the second world war. The composer will conduct the work, which will feature mezzo-soprano Christianne Stotijn and baritone Simon Keenlyside. The first night of the Proms, on 12 July, will see the premiere of Julian Anderson's Harmony – performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra with its new chief conductor, Finn Sakari Oramo.
This year's Proms will also feature a significant focus on Polish music, with works throughout the season by Lutosławski, Szymanowski, Penderecki, Panufnik and Górecki, and the Proms debut of the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra.
• The BBC Proms run from 12 July-7 September. Tickets are on sale from 9am on Saturday 11 May via bbc.co.uk/proms, by telephone on 0845 401 5040 or in person at the Royal Albert Hall.
