91Èȱ¬

From the very early days of the Proms, when Henry Wood began introducing his "novelties", the Proms has led the way in championing new music, commissioning and presenting first performances across the years. In 2009, there are 12 major 91Èȱ¬ commissions and a further 15 world, UK or London premieres. There is also a significant body of music by important voices of the 20th and 21st centuries, including such composers as LutosÏ€awski, Zimmermann, Ligeti, Xenakis and Takemitsu.

91Èȱ¬ commissions

Tom Arthurs – And Distant Shore

Jazz trumpeter Tom Arthurs is only the second jazz artist to be taken up by Radio 3's New Generation Artists scheme. The 91Èȱ¬/Royal Philharmonic Society commission And Distant Shore gets its world premiere as part of the Radio 3 New Generation Artists Weekend, and pairs him with (classical) trumpeter Giuliano Sommerhalder in a two-trumpet-and-piano piece. Alongside a huge range of jazz influences, Arthurs cites a fascination with the music of Gyorgy Ligeti, and says: "I look for a seamless integration between improvisation and composition in my music. Composition that sounds as free as if it were improvised, and improvisations so rich in form and content that you might think they were composed." (31 Aug)

Unsuk Chin – Cello Concerto

Korean-born Unsuk Chin has lived in Berlin since 1988, the year she completed her studies with Gyorgy Ligeti. Her international reputation is built on a series of kaleidoscopic orchestral, instrumental and operatic works. Unlike her three previous concertos, this work, she says, "is about the competitiveness" between soloist and orchestra. It was written for Alban Gerhardt, a former 91Èȱ¬ New Generation Artist, who gives the world premiere with the 91Èȱ¬ Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Ilan Volkov (13 Aug).

Ben Foskett – new work

Young Paris-based British composer Ben Foskett makes his Proms debut with a new work for orchestra, to be given its world premiere by the 91Èȱ¬ Symphony Orchestra and Susanna Malkki. His music encompasses concert, dance, electronic and theatre works, though at the time of writing he didn't know what direction his new piece might take. He says: "When I start a work I tend towards bare pitches and rhythms as the source of inspiration... I try to use the orchestra as an everchanging textural palette that is constantly expanding and contracting in different directions." (2 Aug)

George Gershwin, arr. Barrie Forgie – Shall We Dance v They Can't Take That Away From Me

91Èȱ¬ Big Band conductor and arranger Barry Forgie has made a new arrangement of this Gershwin classic, first sung by Fred Astaire in the popular 1937 comedy musical Shall We Dance. For this version, mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly – who at one point in her career nearly quit classical singing in favour of jazz – will be joined by trumpeter Alison Balsom.

Detlev Glanert – Shoreless River

One of Germany's most popular composers, Glanert writes music that is unashamedly tonal: Mahler, Schubert and Shostakovich are his idols. Shoreless River is a foretaste of his forthcoming opera, Das Holzschiff (The Wooden Ship), though he describes the relationship between this work and the opera as "loose", explaining that the instrumental work is a "musical 'laboratory' where I can develop techniques and moods in preparation for the stage work, without using the same music or subject." Semyon Bychkov and the 91Èȱ¬ Symphony Orchestra give the UK premiere of this work, jointly commissioned by the 91Èȱ¬ with the WDR Symphony Orchestra, Cologne, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Amsterdam, and the National Symphony Orchestra, Washington DC (19 Aug).

Goldie – new work

The DJ, producer, drum 'n' bass pioneer, and 91Èȱ¬ Two Maestro finalist, Goldie, has been commissioned to write a short piece for the Evolution! A Darwin-inspired Extravaganza for Kids. The new work will reflect the theme of the concert – Evolution – and will be the first time that Goldie has written acoustic music for orchestral forces – in this case, the 91Èȱ¬ Concert Orchestra – rather than electronic and synthetic sound production (1 & 2 Aug). The journey from Goldie first receiving the commission through to the world premiere performance at the Proms will be filmed to form a two-part documentary to be shown on 91Èȱ¬ Two.

Michael Jarrell – Sillages

The new triple concerto by Michael Jarrell – widely regarded as the most important Swiss composer of his generation – is about line, waves and shape. "Sillage," he explains, "is the trace that a ship leaves behind it on the surface of the water." He also sees it as a "quill pen drawing a line on a blotter. The ink then takes on a life of its own as it impregnates the paper unevenly." The concerto begins with the soloists playing a unison A, the note musicians use for tuning up, which "smudges" to incorporate other pitches. The work – whose first movement was commissioned by the Orchestre de la Suisee Romande, and whose second and final movement is a 91Èȱ¬ commission – gets its first complete performance from Jarrell's compatriot Thierry Fischer and the 91Èȱ¬ National Orchestra of Wales with the soloists for whom the work was written, Emmanuel Pahud (flute), Francois Leleux (oboe) and Paul Meyer (clarinet) (3 Aug). Jarrell is the subject of a Proms Composer Portrait concert at the Royal College of Music.

John McCabe – Sonata (Study No. 12)

McCabe turns 70 this year, and as well as a London premiere for his Horn Concerto (5 Sept), his new 91Èȱ¬ commission gets its world premiere. Played by Ashley Wass as part of Radio 3's New Generation Artist weekend, it is part of an ongoing series of Studies dedicated to composers he admires. "What I love about Tippett's piano music," he explains, "is his ability to conjure up wonderful textures and exploit the piano's resources fully. His writing is not really idiomatic, but it doesn't matter – the essence of the music is so powerful." (31 Aug)

Anna Meredith – new work

In froms, her commission for the 2008 Last Night of the Proms, young Scottish composer Anna Meredith took advantage of the geographical spread of the 91Èȱ¬ orchestras at Proms in the Park events to produce an exuberant work simultaneously performed in Glasgow, Swansea, Belfast and London and drawn together by satellite link-ups. The forces for her new piece – two pianos and chamber orchestra – may be more modest, but her new work is one of the highlights in a day at the Proms devoted to exploring music for more than one piano. "I'm looking forward to writing a piece with the energy of the two pianists," she says, "pitting them against each other, or perhaps teaming them up like a monster-piano versus the orchestra." (9 Aug)

Michael Nyman – The Musicologist Scores

Michael Nyman puts a modern spin on anniversary composers Handel and Purcell using his own distinctive Minimalist signature. For Nyman, who studied with Baroque music specialist Thurston Dart, the two styles are freely connected: "My use of closed variation forms with repetitive harmonic systems has as much to do with the Baroque as with Minimalism," he says. The Musicologist Scores gets its world premiere in the first ever Prom from the Michael Nyman Band in a concert which also includes excerpts from his scores to the Peter Greenaway films The Draughtsman's Contract and The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (25 Aug).

Augusta Read Thomas – Violin Concerto No. 3, Juggler In Paradise

In the new Violin Concerto by American composer Augusta Read Thomas, which was premiered in Paris in January, the soloist takes the role of the "juggler", rhapsodising a path through a "paradise" of bell sounds. Jointly commissioned by the 91Èȱ¬, Radio France, Mr and Mrs Bill Brown and the National Symphony Orchestra, Washington DC, it is a work in which the soloist and orchestra take defined roles. The composer explains: "Harp, celesta, piano and the four percussion together form a kind of 'helix' of bell sounds... always kaleidoscopic in colour and sometimes with additional string pizzicato." The violinist interweaves around this flow of sound. "A metaphor might be," Read Thomas continues, "the works of the painter Georges Seurat in that there are 'dots' of 'bells' everywhere – no two ever the same." Jirí Belohlavek conducts the 91Èȱ¬ Symphony Orchestra in this UK premiere (9 Sept). Augusta Read Thomas is the subject of a Proms Composer Portrait concert at the Royal College of Music.

Ryan Wigglesworth – The Genesis of Secrecy

Ryan Wigglesworth, 30 this year, combines a career as a conductor and composer and makes a double Proms debut in 2009 (he returns later in the season to coconduct the 91Èȱ¬ Symphony Orchestra in Birtwistle's The Mask of Orpheus – 14 Aug). His new work celebrates the 800th anniversary of the University of Cambridge, where he lectures, and is given by the 91Èȱ¬ Symphony Orchestra under Sir Andrew Davis. Wigglesworth made his conducting and composing debut with the 91Èȱ¬ SO in 2008 in a concert which included his own Sternenfall. "To write consecutive works for the same orchestra is a precious gift," he says. "I began to conceive of ideas of a second work, and the challenge of producing music that takes advantage of the Royal Albert Hall's combination of vastness and intimacy is its own creative stimulus." (22 July)

Other world, UK or London premieres

Louis Andriessen – The Hague Hacking

A Tom and Jerry cartoon featuring Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 was part of the inspiration behind Dutch radical Louis Andriessen's new piece. The two-piano concerto is given its UK premiere by the Labeque sisters and Esa-Pekka Salonen making his first Proms appearance as the Philharmonia's new Principal Conductor (17 Aug). Louis Andriessen is the subject of a Proms Composer Portrait concert at the Royal College of Music.

Sir Richard Rodney Bennett – Lilliburlero Variations

Originally written for two pianos, Sir Richard Rodney Bennett's variations on the famous Irish tune first published by Purcell now appear in a new orchestral guise. The work receives its world premiere from the 91Èȱ¬ Philharmonic in the Free Family Prom (26 July).

Cornelis de Bondt – Doors Closed

The music of Dutch composer Cornelis de Bondt is obsessed with ritual and the subject of Doors Closed (1984), now widely regarded as a modern classic, is death. It is created out of a fusion between the funeral march from Beethoven's Eroica Symphony and Dido's Lament from Purcell's Dido and Aeneas; it gets its London premiere in a Late Night Prom to mark the 70th birthday of his teacher Louis Andriessen (28 Aug).

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies – Violin Concerto No. 2

Long a resident of the Orkney islands, the Master of The Queen's Music celebrates his 75th birthday by conducting Mendelssohn's The Hebrides overture alongside his own new violin concerto, commissioned by Mendelssohn's old orchestra, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, and written specially for Daniel Hope, who gives the UK premiere here (8 Sept).

Philip Glass – Symphony No. 7, "A Toltec Symphony"

One of the most prolific, influential and instantly identifiable composers of our age, Philip Glass has influenced the course of 20th-century music with his pioneering Minimalist scores, and the first ever Prom devoted to his music includes the UK premiere of the Toltec Symphony (2004). It takes its title from the ancient pre-Columbian culture that reigned in Mesoamerica long before the coming of the Europeans, vestiges of which still survive among the indigenous peoples of Mexico today. It is performed by the 91Èȱ¬ Symphony Chorus and 91Èȱ¬ Scottish Symphony Orchestra, conducted by long-time champion of Glass's music, Dennis Russell Davies (12 Aug).

Osvaldo Golijov after Schubert – She Was Here

This work by the Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov is about his relationship with the music of Schubert, and is an intense exploration of loss and consolation in which Golijov draws on a ravishing range of colours to enhance the poetic imagery of four Schubert songs. Dedicated to the late Anthony Minghella, the work gets its UK premiere at the Proms in a performance given by Dawn Upshaw and the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich conducted by David Zinman (29 Aug).

Heinz Holliger – (S)irato

Oboist-composer Heinz Holliger's punningly entitled (S)irato is an "angry" lament for his teacher, the Hungarian composer Sandor Veress – who spent most of his life in Holliger's homeland, Switzerland. It gets its UK premiere from the 91Èȱ¬ National Orchestra of Wales under Holliger's compatriot Thierry Fischer, in the composer’s 70th-birthday year (4 Aug).

Toshio Hosokawa – Cloud and Light

The recent Cloud and Light, for sho and orchestra by Hiroshima-born composer Toshio Hosokawa, was inspired by a painting showing Buddha "on a cloud with musicians descending down to the land", and is given its UK premiere as part of a three-part Prom tracing musical cross-fertilisations between East and West, and between France and Spain. The French Orchestre National de Lyon is conducted Jun Markl, who is half German and half Japanese (24 July).

Oliver Knussen – Cleveland Pictures

Oliver Knussen, the 91Èȱ¬ Symphony Orchestra's new Artist-in-Association, introduces his latest piece to the Proms for its UK premiere, shortly after it gets its world premiere from The Cleveland Orchestra. The composer conducts the 91Èȱ¬ Symphony Orchestra
(7 Aug).

John McCabe – Horn Concerto, Rainforest IV

This concerto was premiered in Cardiff in 2007 by the 91Èȱ¬ National Orchestra of Wales and soloist David Pyatt, who join forces again for its London premiere at the Proms. The work confronts urban jazz with the sounds of the equatorial rainforests and is one of two McCabe premieres this season marking the composer's 70th birthday (5 Sept).

Rebecca Saunders – traces

London-born composer Rebecca Saunders has lived in Germany for most of her adult life, and brings to the UK for the first time a "thoroughly revised and expanded" version of a work that had its premiere in Hamburg in 2006, and is inspired by Italo Calvino and Samuel Beckett (27 Aug).

Alfred Schnittke – Nagasaki

A belated UK premiere for Schnittke's early, Orff-influenced oratorio Nagasaki, in what would have been the composer's 75th-anniversary year. It is an agonised expression of solidarity with the victims of the second atomic bomb, dropped on the city the day before Japan's surrender in 1945. Heavily criticised by the Soviet Composers' Union, it only received its 1959 broadcast premiere (on Moscow World Service Radio) after Shostakovich's recommendation, and was not publicly performed until 2006. Valery Gergiev conducts the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus (24 Aug).

Claude Vivier – Orion

Montreal-born composer Claude Vivier was murdered in his Paris apartment in 1983, at the age of just 34. In the International Year of Astronomy, his intriguing exploration of the echoing vastnesses of outer space is brought to the UK for the first time by Charles Dutoit, who conducted its 1980 premiere in Montreal. It is written for an appropriately vast orchestra with a cosmic-sized percussion section (30 Aug).

Jorg Widmann – Con brio

Con brio, by the young Munich-born clarinettist and composer Jorg Widmann, was written at the behest of conductor Mariss Jansons, who asked for a piece to be programmed alongside Beethoven's Seventh and Eighth Symphonies. Widmann says it "takes over" the expression of Beethoven, without quoting from him. It portrays, he says, "a festive-celebrating overture, larded with furious scherzo elements" and its UK premiere is given by the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra under Jonathan Nott (29 July). Jorg Widmann is the subject of a Proms Composer Portrait concert at the Royal College of Music.

John Woolrich – Capriccio

The world premiere of Capriccio, a "concertante for violin and strings", is the centrepiece of a Proms Chamber Music concert at Cadogan Hall, framed by classic works by Purcell, Mozart and Stravinsky. It is given by an ensemble and soloist/director with whom the composer has an enduring relationship, the Scottish Ensemble and Jonathan Morton
(10 Aug).