Thirty years ago next summer, the Proms nearly died. In an early-Thatcherite manoeuvre, the BBC decided to cut the orchestras it employed from 11 to six and the Musicians' Union called a summer strike. Broadcasting House issued a statement declaring that “the BBC is prepared to sacrifice the Proms rather than drop the plan to disband five orchestras” and the nation settled into a wearisome routine of mutual name-calling and third-party arbitration.

Intransigence was the spirit of the times. An offer by the Proms controller, Robert Ponsonby, to play the concerts with an audience at the Royal Albert Hall but no broadcast was shot down by the MD of BBC Radio for being contrary to “our national orchestral aspirations” — as if some petty sheet of management-speak could take precedence over a festival that had run since 1895, unbroken by economic crash or Nazi bombs.

For 20 black nights in 1980, Radio 3 spun records and musicians staged anti-BBC Proms all around the town. On the eve of the fourth week, a deal was struck and both sides lost. The union gave up six orchestras and the BBC public sympathy. By putting the Proms on the line in an industrial dispute, the BBC showed how remote it was from the popular mood. Applications for Last Night tickets fell by a third and it took four years and a costly marketing campaign to restore ticket sales to pre-strike levels. A lesson was learned, painful, drastic — and still evolving.

The rumbustious John Drummond was brought in to replace the quiet Ponsonby in the mid-Eighties and the Proms were stamped with a large BBC logo. Year by year the audience has grown — in house, online and on air to 16 million — and decade by decade the brand has been retuned.

Drummond upgraded new music and visiting orchestras, resisting pressures to trivialise. Nicholas Kenyon, his 1996 successor, added outdoor Last Nights in Hyde Park and all four corners of the kingdom. Roger Wright, who took over last year, will seize his chance this summer to freshen up the festival — a timely moment since classical listening is rising in the recession and BBC Radio 3, with an increased audience share, has just been named Station of the Year.

Wright's Proms will be the first to exceed 100 events, many of them with Proms-Plus accessories. The brand is unaltered and the innovations are generally careful extensions of successful past experiments. A tentative sampling of Indian music has become a whole day of Indian voices. A rare piano recital by Evgeny Kissin or Lang Lang becomes a whole day of multiple pianos featuring anything from a hotel-lobby pianola to the six-deck pianocircus ensemble. The multi-piano strand, fronted by Katia and Marielle Labèque, is carried on through the season by way of two-piano concertos by Poulenc, Martinu, Andriessen, Mozart and Zimmermann.

Proms planners have learned the hard way at the box office that it is impossible to extend a single style or theme across seven weeks. The year's four big anniversaries — Purcell Handel, Haydn and Mendelssohn — are deftly celebrated without being allowed to dominate, likewise the 75th birthdays of three British composers, Harrison Birtwistle, Alexander Goehr and Peter Maxwell Davies. Music from all 11 ballets by Stravinsky is being performed complete for the first time in a single season.

While other big festivals at Salzburg, Lucerne, Aix, Aldeburgh and Edinburgh are stand-alone events, unrelated to anything that happens through the rest of the year, the Proms exist to advertise the BBC's regular provision of a rich and varied diet of classical music, distinct from commercial radio's restricted playlist. Into the Proms this year come the mysteriously neglected modern masters Schnittke, Ligeti, Lutoslawski and George Crumb, whose whale-sound Vox Balanae has never been heard before in this setting, a moment for Darwinian contemplation.

The Proms this year are, more than ever before, a pick-and-mix bag. Their chief appeal is a reputation (est 1895) for being ridiculously cheap. You can queue for standing room at £5 or get in for less than half as much on a variety of season tickets. No other attraction, not even oldies' afternoon at the local fleapit, offers nearly as much entertainment for so little money.

Last year, uptake for main concerts hit a record 90 per cent. The overall £8.8 million cost of the Proms leaves the BBC with a £6 million net loss, yet when tempted with offers of commercial sponsorship, even the slide-rule John Birt regime recognised that credit for the Proms is too precious to be shared. The Proms are the BBC's gift to the nation and the world.

Slowly and screaming, television has been dragged back into the picture this year, showing 25 Proms across four channels, albeit with dumbed-down presentation in front of a large potted plant.

The BBC is getting whatever it can out of the Proms to reclaim the cultural high ground. But the more it brands and blazons the Proms, the more it misses the point.

London in midsummer is a musical desert. The Proms are the only place to hear a live concert for those who cannot get away. The bigger the Proms get, the more they reflect something larger than low-cost music and less civic than the case for public broadcasting in a multi-channel environment. The Proms have outgrown these parameters. They are the premier emblem of London in summertime, parched parks and tepid beers, sweltering Tube trains and air-conditioned bookstores, a chaffinch always singing in the trees. But they are also, on air and online, bigger than time and place. At 100 concerts and so much more, the Proms have grown into an annual Festival of Britain, the very best of us, our window to the world.
Norman Lebrecht
www.normanlebrecht.com

MUSIC WRITERS' TOP PICKS
BARRY MILLINGTON - Chief music critic picks:
Handel's gender-bender
There's a lovely twist on the gender-bending of opera seria in Handel's Partenope when a prince's true identity is revealed by a challenge to fight bare-chested. The character has to decline, to prevent her identity being exposed along with her anatomy. The Royal Danish Opera under Lars Ulrik Mortensen presents Handel's glorious music.
Prom 4, 6pm, 19 July

Starry Night
In all the hype surrounding the major anniversaries we should not overlook the 60th birthday of John Casken, one of Britain's finest composers. His Orion Over Farne, evoking the constellation in the Northumbrian night sky, is given by the CBSO under Andris Nelsons, in a programme that also includes Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky's Firebird.
Prom 16, 7pm, 28 July

Podium Prowess
Making his Proms debut is one of the most exciting talents to emerge in recent years: the French-Canadian conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin. His programme with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra includes Mendelssohn's Reformation Symphony and the ever-popular Schumann Piano Concerto, with Nicholas Angelich as soloist.
Prom 20, 7.30pm, 31 July

Rising Talent
Contemporary music remains a staple ingredient of the Proms and this concert includes, in addition to a new work by Oliver Knussen, a short piece by a younger talent now deservedly getting noticed: Helen Grime. Her Virga and Knussen's Cleveland Pictures are conducted by Knussen himself with the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
Prom 30, 7.30pm, 7 August

Prodigious Pianism
Opportunities to hear the superlative pianism of Martha Argerich are all too rare but in this concert with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Charles Dutoit she can be heard in concertos by Ravel (the jazzy G major) and Prokofiev (the sparkling No1).
Prom 60, 7.30pm, 30 August

LOUISE JURY - Chief arts correspondent picks:
Haitink's 80th with monumental Mahler
The Dutch conductor Bernard Haitink, highly revered ex-music director at Covent Garden, celebrates his 80th birthday — and 50 years since his UK debut — with Mahler's final completed symphony, the Ninth, a deeply intense work written when the composer was grief-stricken from the death of his daughter. The London Symphony Orchestra performs.
Prom 5, 7pm, 20 July

Cambridge choral
The long tradition of college choirs is honoured in a mass celebration of the 800th anniversary of the University of Cambridge. Six colleges combine for a programme including Vaughan Williams, Stanford and Judith Weir — all with strong university ties. London-born baritone Simon Keenlyside, once a Cambridge choral scholar, is the soloist, with Thomas Trotter on the organ.
Prom 8, 8pm, 22 July

Barenboim conducts Berlioz...
On its 10th anniversary, the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra — Barenboim's “peace” ensemble of Arab and Israeli musicians — tackles Berlioz's dramatic Romantic masterpiece, Symphonie Fantastique, though for many it will be the sublime Prelude and Liebestod from Wagner's Tristan and Isolde that's the draw. Liszt's symphonic poem, Les Préludes, completes the programme.
Prom 48, 7pm, 21 August

...And Barenboim Does Beethoven
Nothing could seem more apt for a West-Eastern Divan Prom than Fidelio, Beethoven's passionate protest against political injustice — and his only opera. Barenboim will conduct a concert performance in German with English narration written by the late Edward Said, Barenboim's co-founder in the Divan mission. Soloists include Sir John Tomlinson, with Waltraude Meier as Leonore/narrator.
Prom 50, 7.30pm, 22 August

Michael Nyman's movies
An offbeat tribute to the 350th anniversary of the birth of Henry Purcell, Nyman's first dedicated Prom is packed with compositions based on the English Baroque master. Film fans will relish The Draughtsman's Contract and The Cook, The Thief … while a premiere, The Musicologist Scores, echoes Purcell and Handel heard in Prom 53 earlier in the evening.
Prom 54, 10.15pm, 25 August

NICK KIMBERLEY - Music critic picks:
Bassoon bonanza
The spotlight doesn't often fall on bassoonists, but having been runner-up in BBC's Classical Star, Karen Geoghegan is a special case. Here, with the BBC Philharmonic under the dynamic Gianandrea Noseda, she plays Mozart's delightful Bassoon Concerto. Noseda's programme also includes Stravinsky's Scènes de Ballet and Mahler's doomy Sixth Symphony.
Prom 28, 7.30pm, 5 August

Pianos a go-go
A mighty army of pianists gathers for “multiple pianos day”. Katia and Marielle Labèque headline the first concert with the Britten Sinfonia. Then the London Sinfonietta unleashes a double riot in the form of Antheil's Ballet Mécanique and Stravinsky's Les Noces. Bartók's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion offers an oasis of comparative calm.
Proms 32 & 33, 3pm & 7.30pm, 9 August

Indian voices day
Even as BBC Radio 3 downgrades its commitment to world music, the Proms remain open to non-Western sounds. These two concerts focus on Indian singing, traditional and modern. The first takes us to northern India and Kerala, including the legendary Mishra brothers. The second clears the floor for Bollywood music and dance.
Proms 41 & 42, 10.30am & 7.30pm,
16 August

Militant minimalism
Dutch composer Louis Andriessen has created a unique style of European minimalism, all brassy aggression and swaggering rhythms. The Netherlands Wind Ensemble under Lukas Viss celebrates the composer's 70th birthday with his polemical De Staat (The State), plus works by Andriessen's former students Steve Martland and Cornelis de Bondt.
Prom 58, 10.15pm, 28 August

Mahler's heartbreak
Matthias Goerne may be the finest baritone in the world today; he's certainly one of the most imaginative. With the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra and Jonathan Nott he sings Mahler's heartbroken Kindertotenlieder; it should be electrifying. The programme also includes orchestral works by Ligeti, Schoenberg and Richard Strauss (Also Sprach Zarathustra).
Prom 65, 7pm, 4 September

KIERON QUIRKE - Opera critic picks:
Sho-business
A Bento-style prom. In eight, short intercultural works, The Orchestre National de Lyon trace conversations between Japanese, French and Spanish music by Ravel, Debussy, Sarasate and Takemitsu. Jun Mankl conducts. Mayuma Miyata plays the sho (a Japanese mouth organ).
Prom 10, 7.30pm, 24 July

Star-gazing
The BBC Phil does a patriotic selection of Delius, Elgar and Holst to commemorate all three of them dying 75 years ago. Sir Charles Mackerras's baton guarantees quality. If Prommers are thinnish on the ground, lie back and hear The Planets while contemplating the massive spacey mushrooms hanging from the RAH's ceiling. Very cool, though possibly against fire regulations.
Prom 12, 7.30pm, 25 July

Thank heaven for MGM
Many of the orchestral scores of the original MGM film musicals were lost to posterity. Now John Wilson has reconstructed them, which provides a perfect excuse for this fun Prom. No specific numbers promised, just starry singers. But with Gigi among the scores, there's a possibility we'll get Sir Thomas Allen doing Thank Heaven For Little Girls. Come on!
Prom 22, 7.30pm, 1 August

Classical Radiohead
A classy prom with real proselytising possibilities. I'll bet 10 pence that the Radiohead fans who come for and enjoy Jonny Greenwood's Popcorn Superhet Receiver are blown away by Harrison Birtwistle's edgier, trippier The Mask of Orpheus,­ the second act of which makes up this Prom's second half. The BBCSO are the players, under Martyn Brabbins.
Prom 39, 7.30pm, 14 August

Backing our own
Time we supported our wonderful National Youth Orchestra, overlooked last time they were in London while we fawned over the inferior Simon Bolivar lot. In their first tour under their new principal conductor, brilliant young Vasily Petrenko, the wünderkinder play Respighi and the Lutoslawski Concerto for Orchestra. Stephen Hough joins them for Tchaikovsky's first piano concerto.
Prom 31, 7.30pm, 8 August

NORMAN LEBRECHT - Columnist picks:
Double Martinu
Even a Martinu-head like me has not heard his rare Two Piano Concerto, performed here with Smetana, Bartók and Stravinsky. The pairing of the Paris-oriented Czech with a pair of central Europeans and a Stravinsky ballet that was made for French consumption is a piece of programming magic by the BBC's chief conductor, Jiri Belohlavek.
Prom 15, 7.30pm, 27 July

Samson vs the Philistines
Handel's Samson is empathetic beyond words, the blinded, dying hero surrounded by gloating Philistines re-created by a blinded, ageing composer in the heat of the London season. “No sun, no moon” is one of the most affecting arias in the whole of classical literature. Harry Bicket conducts a cast topped by Mark Padmore and Susan Gritton.
Prom 47, 6.30pm, 20 August

Russians at War
The UK first performance of Schnittke's Nagasaki is long overdue. An early work, rhythmic and raging, it was suppressed in Russia after a 1959 broadcast and not heard again until 2006. In the second half Valery Gergiev and the LSO play the wartime Eighth Symphony of Dmitri Shostakovich, a work inseminated with satiric dissidence.
Prom 52, 7.30pm, 24 August

Crumb's whale song
Pierre Boulez has not spoken to me since I ranked the 80-year-old American George Crumb as his equal in originality. Unaffected to a fault, Crumb is fixated by the natural world. In Vox Balanae, he works around the haunting underwater noises of humpback whales. In Ancient Voices of Children he invades Mahler's mortal concerns.
Prom 66, 10.15pm, 4 September

Mendelssohn and Mahler
Mendelssohn's First Piano Concerto and Mahler's 10th symphony with the Leipzig Gewandhaus and Riccardo Chailly is a stunning piece of matchmaking. The concerto, written in three days, sounds like a party piece but has an unsettling undertow. Mahler's score, completed by the BBC's Deryck Cooke, was written while his marriage and life were collapsing. Not for the squeamish.
Prom 69, 7.30pm, 7 September

General booking for the Proms opens today. Ticket available on 0845 401 5040, at www.bbc.co.uk/proms, or in person. 500 £5 arena and gallery tickets go on sale at the Albert Hall box office 30 minutes before the doors open for each Prom.