Thomas Adès [Marco Borggreve]

CASTING carbon footprints to the wind, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra arrives in London this week for a Prom on August 29. And having come so far, you might have hoped they would have brought a more distinctive programme: Dvořák and Tchaikovsky are composers any UK orchestra can offer without clocking up so many air miles.

That said, there’s a modest tribute to Australian music squeezed into the evening, by composer Margaret Sutherland. But this still seems like a missed opportunity. The stock of latterday Australian composers – Carl Vine, Peter Sculthorpe, Richard Meale – is notable; but when, in Britain, do we get to hear them? Rarely.

By contrast, for the morning Prom on August 30 Simon Rattle steers the LSO through a picture-postcard view of Olde England with folk-song and dance arrangements by Vaughan Williams and Percy Grainger (who paradoxically hailed from Australia), alongside Malcolm Arnold and Michael Tippett.

And at the evening Prom on the same day, there’s an exploration of Handel’s relationship with Ireland.

It’s well known that his Messiah was unveiled to the world in Dublin in 1742 but less well known that in the same year he had a spot of bother in the same city with his oratorio Alexander’s Feast. He needed singers from St Patrick’s Cathedral but had fallen out with the Dean there (the crusty Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver’s Travels) who wouldn’t let his cathedral choir be involved. So Handel had to use theatre performers and rewrite the piece to accommodate them.

For this Prom on August 30, the Irish Baroque Orchestra sweep into the Albert Hall with an account of Alexander’s Feast that recreates how it played to its 18th-century Dublin audience. Last-minute adjustments and all. Let’s hope it won’t be so historically authentic as to recreate the chaos.

Few musicians throughout history, though, have been confronted with the kind of problems Shostakovich faced in Soviet Russia. To be prominent as creative artist was to live in terror. And for Shostakovich things got seriously worrying after his abrasive opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (about a woman brutalised into committing murder) was denounced by Stalin as “muddle rather than music”.

Fortunately both the opera and its author lived to tell the tale (Stalin conveniently died). And you can decide for yourself how much of a “muddle” it is when the piece plays at the Prom, September 1. Using the ENO Chorus with soloists like Nicky Spence and Brindley Sherratt, it should pack some punch.

There’s more operatic music at the Prom, September 2, when Thomas Adès conducts the BBCSO in five “Spells” from his own adaptation of The Tempest – playing alongside Sibelius’s incidental music for the stage play.

And if you haven’t made it to the Proms this year, be warned: there’s not much time left. The Last Night is looming. Details: bbc.co.uk/proms

• Meanwhile, the Hampstead Collective have an evening of music for viols and voices by Orlando Gibbons (who died four centuries ago this year), September 1, St John’s Church, NW3. thehampsteadcollective.com

• And the Arcola Theatre, Dalston, has a spin on Tosca running September 2-6, with extracts from Puccini’s original opera playing alongside a new score and scenario. It won’t be what you know and love but could be interesting. arcolatheatre.com