“The World’s Greatest Classical Music Festival” claims the BBC modestly of its Proms. But how to launch such a wide­-ranging, increasingly heterogeneous festival?

Once it would be inaugurated with major choral and orchestral works — mighty Mahler, say, or Beethoven. But the BBC’s current strategy is to lure as many new converts as possible with an upbeat programme that can be presented on TV by celebrities such as Clive Anderson and Stephen Fry.

In this sense, the opening night was a fair token of a season that will include Goldie, Jonny Greenwood, the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain and an Indian Voices Day. If Proms director Roger Wright can broaden the audience base without compromising quality, his policy will justify itself. Those for whom present-day television represents the nadir of civilisation will take some convincing.

Friday provided a taster of goodies to come: Tchaikovsky piano concertos, multiple pianos, Stravinsky (especially the ballets), the year 1934. Tchaikovsky’s cheerful single-movement Third Piano Concerto, his last work, offered a revisionist view of his supposedly suicidal last days. Stephen Hough delivered its cascading figuration with aplomb but it will only ever have curiosity value.

The Labèque Sisters brought more gratifying lyricism and rhythmic zest to Poulenc’s Concerto for Two Pianos, Alice Coote a veiled eloquence to the darker emotional territory of Brahms’s Alto Rhapsody, and the BBC Symphony Chorus, with soloist Ailish Tynan, a full-throated fervour to Bruckner’s celebratory Psalm 150.

Best of all was the glorious effulgence and Mediterranean warmth of Elgar’s In the South, as irradiated by Jiri Belohlavek and the BBC Symphony Orchestra.