Joshua Bell [Phil Knott]

WE like to think we have great orchestras in Britain – and we do. But we have nothing quite like the most magisterial ensembles of mainland Europe, which tend to have existed far longer than ours and acquired unmatchable grandeur.

I’m thinking of the Berlin or Vienna Philharmonic. And I’m also thinking of two venerable orchestra that sail into the Proms this week and grace the stage of the Albert Hall. One is the Royal Concertgebouw, established in Amsterdam in the 1880s and still one of the world’s uber-bands. While the other is the Leipzig Gewandhaus which can trace its history back to the 1740s and (should you wonder) is named after the garment warehouse where it once gave concerts.

When the Gewandhaus arrives on August 26, it’s with chief conductor Andris Nelsons, playing Sibelius 2nd Symphony. But the Concertgebouw gets two days’ exposure, August 23 & 24, with its young superstar conductor Klaus Makela who many thought too young to be given the responsibility for leading so venerable an institution, though he’s turning out to be more than just the glamorous poster-boy he first seemed.

On August 23 the programme is Mahler’s 5th Symphony (the one whose languorous Adagietto accompanied Dirk Bogarde as he stalked an under-age adonis in the film of Death in Venice). On August 24 it’s Bartok and Prokofiev. And if you manage to be present on any of these dates, it will most likely be one of those events you look back to at the year’s end and feel thankful you were there.

But there’s a different sort of star ensemble, not at the Proms but the Festival Hall, on August 28: the sassy, hyper-energetic, Simón Bolívar Orchestra over from Venezuela with its livewire conductor Gustavo Dudamel. Until not so long ago this was a youth orchestra, albeit a high-profile one serving as an ambassador for the El Sistema music programme that rescues children from hard lives on the mean streets of Caracas. And as such it attracted a mixture of praise and suspicion for its political involvement with the Chavez regime.

Now it’s an adult band. And Dudamel has managed to steer it away from dubious connections. So feel free to cheer its predictably exuberant hip-swaying renditions of Bernstein and de Falla with good conscience. www.southbankcentre.co.uk

Going back to the Proms, Glyndebourne are there on August 27 with a semi-staging of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro uprooted from the current Sussex season. Singers include the young British baritone turning heads these days, Huw Montague Rendall.

And on August 22, the ever-glossy American violinist Joshua Bell gives the (long-delayed) UK premiere of a concerto by Ukrainian composer Thomas de Hartmann. A piece that laments the invasion of his country, it’s actually about invasion by the Nazis in the 1940s when the piece was written; but as history repeats itself in that part of the world, it will have contemporary resonance – on a sobering programme that includes Gorecki’s runaway orchestral success, his Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. Details for all Proms: bbc.co.uk/proms

Closer to home if you’re in Tufnell Park, Acland Burghley School have another of their high-profile concerts, Aug 26, featuring mezzo of the moment Helen Charlston in Schubert songs arranged for voice and string quartet. Tickets: oae.co.uk