'This is the best of me.' So wrote Elgar at the end of his score and, despite a disastrous first performance in 1900, his setting of Newman's poem is now regarded as one of the composer's finest works. In the interval, James Hamilton Paterson, author of the novel Gerontius talks about his fascination with this enigmatic composer. Tonight's concert from the Royal Albert Hall, London, launching the 97th season of Promenade Concerts, is given in the presence of HRH the Prince of Wales.

With Florence Quivar (mezzo-soprano), Keith Lewis (tenor), Willard White (bass), BBC Singers, BBC Symphony Chorus, London Philharmonic Choir, BBC Symphony Orchestra. Conductor Andrew Davis.

Introduced by Richard Baker.

Great British Music

The first in the season of highlights from this summer's Promenade

Concerts salutes three British composers. Walton's brassy Crown Imperial is the curtain-raiser, followed by Malcolm Arnold 's Guitar

Concerto played by Julian Bream. And finally, the BBC

Concert Orchestra, conducted by Barry Wordsworth , plays Ralph Vaughan Williams 's

Symphony No 8. Presented by David Owen Morris.

Sheherazade. For 200 years, the classic series of tales from the Middle East, The 1001 Nights, has inspired artists, musicians and dancers. In tonight's highlights from the 1991 Henry Wood Promenade Concerts, Alexander Lazarev conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra in the most famous and popular of these musical inspirations: Rimsky-Korsakov's Sheherazade. To set the scene for tonight's Prom, deaf percussionist Evelyn Glennie talks to Yasin Safadi , an expert on story-telling in Persia and India.

Russian Yuri Bashmet is the soloist in Walton's Viola

Concerto .

Also featured is Shostakovich's

Symphony No 7, the Leningrad, which was written at great speed in 1941 as an inspiration to the Soviet people in their fight against the Nazis. In the interval, singer Galina Vishnevskaya is among those recalling the siege of Leningrad and talking of the impact, then and now, of Shostakovich's music. With the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, conducted by David Atherton. Introduced by Michael Berkeley.

In a few short months, Mark Wigglesworth has come to the fore as one of Britain's most dynamic young conductors. Winner of the 1989 Kondrashin Competition and recently appointed as Associate Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the age of 26, he now makes his Proms debut with a performance of Bartok's Music for Percussion, Strings and Celesta. Robert Ziegler, tonight's presenter and himself a conductor, also meets the venerable Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski, who conducts his new work, a song-cycle called Chantefleurs et Chantefables.

Norwegian soprano Solveig Kringleborn is the soloist with the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

All-Night Vigil by Rachmaninov. Cuban conductor Odaline de la

Martinez introduces a rare and hauntingly beautiful work by a popular composer.

Rachmaninov's setting of the liturgy for the Russian

Orthodox Vigil Service, for unaccompanied voices, is performed by the USSR

Ministry of Culture Chamber Choir, conducted by Valery Polyansky.

The King's Consort. In 1749, the first public rehearsal for Handel's Musick for the Royal Fireworks caused a three-hour traffic jam. Keen to recapture the original fun and excitement - without the chaos - Robert King assembles a huge baroque orchestra in London's Royal Albert Hall , including 20 oboes and 12 bassoons. Also in the programme is the Water Music - written by Telemann. Presented by Nicholas Kenyon.

The 97th season of Henry Wood Promenade Concerts comes to a close, live from the Royal Albert Hall , London. The concert opens with Cockaigne (Elgar), Towards the Unknown Region (Vaughan Williams) and The Walk to the Paradise Garden (Delius). The first half ends on an operatic note with soprano Gwyneth Jones as Briinnhilde in the immolation scene from

Wagner's Götterdämmerung. Andrew Davis conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra, led by Bela Dekany , with the BBC Chorus and the BBC Singers, chorusmaster Stephen Jackson. Introduced by Richard Baker.

The biggest musical party of the year reaches its festive climax as the audience in the packed Royal Albert Hall in London celebrates the second-half of the Last Night of the Proms. Conductor Andrew

Davis, who admits to enjoying 'a bit of a knees-up', steers the BBC Symphony Orchestra through the traditional favourites: Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance March No 1 and Wood's Fantasia on British

Sea Songs, Gwyneth Jones sings Arne's Rule, Britannia!, and the evening rounds off with Parry's Jerusalem, orchestrated by Elgar. Before all of that, there's the march from Things to Come by Bliss, the ever-popular Polovtsian Dances of Borodin and a special treat as Dame

Gwyneth is joined by the 91-year-old harpist

Sidonie Goossens - who played in Sir Adrian Boult 's original BBC SO - to perform Miss

Goossens's own arrangement of The Last Rose of Summer.