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This should really be called "Eighty-four Proms not to miss, and why" because, leaving aside the Proms in the Park on the Last Night, that's how many extraordinary concerts are crammed in between 18 July and 13 September.
This year in particular there are some fantastic pianists to be heard - Murray Perahia, Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Paul Lewis - not to mention Subdin, Berezovsky, Grimaud, Hough, Lewis, Tiberghien, Thibaudet…and the astonishing Lang Lang, who shares a recital with the emphatically named nine-year-old Chinese wunderkind, Marc Yu.
Violinists Nigel Kennedy and Janine Jansen will perform the Elgar and the Bruch concertos, and among the vocal soloists are Barbara Frittoli, Christine Brewer, Amanda Roocroft, Olga Borodina and Bryn Terfel. The big shiny Chicago Symphony and New York Philharmonic are crossing the pond, Simon Rattle's Berlin Philharmonic heads the list of visiting European orchestras, and there are more top conductors than you can shake a stick at.
If you can't get to the Royal Albert Hall, all the concerts are live on BBC Radio 3, streamed online via the BBC iPlayer and available on demand for seven days. Many are also broadcast on BBC2 and BBC4, and this year, for the first time, all the televised Proms can also be watched on demand for seven days via the BBC iPlayer, with some available on BBC HD TV.
Here, then, are the eight concerts that, for me, hold something special.
1. Prom 23, Sunday 3 August, 7:30pm
Donald Runnicles, newly appointed chief conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, is a supreme maestro of the heavy stuff. His reading of Mahler's intense and mystical song-cycle Das Lied von der Erde, with mezzo-soprano Karen Cargill and tenor Johan Botha promises instant enlightenment.
2. Prom 40, Friday 15 August, 7:30pm
Never static, the composer and conductor Pierre Boulez is always reinventing his music and his repertoire. In this concert he brings "the iron fist in the velvet glove" to Janacek's Sinfonietta and Glagolitic Mass. Expect clarity, power and beauty.
3. Prom 46, Wednesday 20 August, 7:00pm
An entire Prom devoted to Tchaikovsky's dreamy ballet score to Sleeping Beauty from Russian conductor Valery Gergiev and the LSO. The meeting of Gergiev's fire with the passion of Tchaikovsky is an infallible recipe for a concert of sustained magic.
4. Prom 54, Tuesday 27 August, 7:30pm
There can be few better combinations for a programme of Vaughan Williams's music than conductor Andrew Davis and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. The special rapport between conductor and orchestra, and their affinity with this most English of music mean that this concert, featuring the Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis and Symphony No 9, will be something much greater than the sum of its parts.
5. Prom 60, Sunday 31 August, 4pm
If there were such a thing as a black belt in piano, Lang Lang would certainly hold one. He brings a flavour of the martial arts to his electrifying performances, yet is also capable of extremely expressive playing with the most telling pianissimos. In this recital of solo piano works by Mozart, Debussy, Rachmaninov and Chopin he will charm, astound and possibly infuriate, and is joined by the nine-year-old Chinese pianist Marc Yu, whom he has dubbed "little Mozart", for a performance of Schubert's F minor Fantasie. But the real fireworks will come from the Bruce Lee of the piano himself in Lizst's Hungarian Rhapsody No 2.
6. Prom 61, Sunday 31 August, 8pm
Verdi's hugely popular Requiem blatantly hijacks the dramatic and the erotic in the service of the divine, and is too often overcooked. But Jiri Belohlavek - with the Crouch End Festival Chorus, the BBC Symphony Chorus and Orchestra and four top soloists, including mezzo-soprano Olga Borodina - will strike the right balance between sacred and profane, from the delicious yearning suspensions of the opening bars all the way through to the serene ending.
7 and 8. Proms 71 and 72, Monday and Tuesday 8 and 9 September, 7:30pm
For half a century he's been one of the world's greatest conductors, and in these two concerts Bernard Haitink commands the great Chicago Symphony in symphonies by Mahler and Shostakovich, a new work by Mark-Anthony Turnage, and Mozart's Piano Concerto No 24 in C minor with Murray Perahia as soloist. Unmatchable and unmissable.
Laurence Joyce
**
See listings for all of the BBC Proms on TV and on radio over the next two weeks.
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