BBC Proms ­– 86 concerts at the Royal Albert Hall [Diliff_CC BY-SA 3.0]

AS ever, the statistics are impressive: 86 concerts, running nightly across eight weeks, every one of them broadcast live on radio, and accessible in person from just £8.
It’s the BBC Proms, back at the Royal Albert Hall July 17-Sept 12. And as Radio 3 will drive you insane by trumpeting relentlessly during the coming weeks, it’s arguably the world’s greatest classical music festival – as well as one of the few things that justify the licence fee (although that said, there are lamentably few Proms on TV this year: a decline that shouldn’t go un-noted).

Things get off to a safe start July 17 with music by Copland and Gershwin to mark the 250th anniversary of American independence – though most people will be there to see the phenomenal Yunchan Lim play Ravel’s G Major piano concerto.

July 19 brings the always-stunning Black Dyke Mills band down from Yorkshire for a morn­ing concert, and later has the Spanish National Orchestra playing what’s advertised as a “heat-soaked” programme of Spanish music (just what we need) including Rodrigo’s deathless guitar concerto.

July 20 pairs Beethoven’s 9th Symphony with a new work by one of the modern black American composers of real stature Jessie Montgomery. July 21 the young winner of last year’s Sibelius Competition, Sueye Park, plays the composer’s violin concerto. July 22 pairs Mahler’s mighty 6th Symphony with a short work by one of the great survivors of the 20th-century European avant-garde Gyorgy Kurtag, to mark his centenary.

And something I especially recommend, July 24, is an Italian evening from John Wilson’s elite band, the Sinfonia of London, featuring Verdi, Respighi, Walton. Should you wonder what Walton is doing there, it’s because the programme includes his luscious, late-Romantic cello concerto – written when the composer was living on Ischia in the Bay of Naples, and saturated with the sultry sound-world of a hot Italian summer night. Yes, more heat. Take an ice pack.

Don’t forget, all Proms go out on Radio 3 if you can’t face the sweat to South Kensington. Full details: bbc.co.uk/proms

• On a more intimate scale, the Arcola Theatre’s annual Grimeborn Opera Festival is up and running, with a double-bill of short new works about climate change, one of them described as a love-letter to Greta Thunberg (who appears personified onstage: her operatic debut, I suppose). They play until July 18. Then, July 21-25, comes something more conventional, with a staging of Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte. arcolatheatre.com

• More fringe opera at the Bloomsbury Theatre, as the feisty Regents Opera company – best known for putting on blockbuster Wagner – turns to Verdi. His Rigoletto runs just one night, July 17. bloomsburytheatre.com

• Most of the main London venues go quiet during proms season, wary of the competition. But Wigmore Hall strides on regardless, with baritone Benjamin Appl July 19, harpsichordist Jean Rondeau July 21, and pianist Boris Giltburg July 24. wigmore-hall.org.uk

• Finally, there’s a handsome music room at Kenwood House, Hampstead Heath, that doesn’t accommodate too much music any more. But it does have an 18th-century chamber organ that hasn’t been played in concert for years but will be heard, after a recent renovation, as part of a July 19 programme by the period ensemble Saraband. The programme repeats, lunchtime and afternoon. Sounds ultra-civilised. english-heritage.org.uk